j  i  \  CD  c  B 


RIVERSIDE 


DANCING,    BEAUTY,    AND    GAMES 


LADY   CONSTANCE   STEWART   RICHARDSON 
From  a  Photograph  by  the   White  Studios 


DANCING,  BEAUTY 


AND 


GAMES 


By 

Lady  Constance  Stewart  Richardson 


LONDON 

ARTHUR    L.   HUMPHREYS 

187    PICCADILLY,   VV. 

1  9*3 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


Physical  Culture   . 

1 

Games         .... 

17 

Beauty       .... 

27 

Teachers    .... 

43 

Dancing      .... 

55 

Swimming    .... 

63 

Big  Game  Shooting 

77 

Religion     .... 

97 

LIST   OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


Lady  Constance  Stewart  Hicham 
A  Good  Pose     . 
Uory  Dancing 

RoKY,    TORQUIL    AND    HaMISH 

Grotesque  Toys 
Miss  Isadora  Duncan 
Mad,le  Adeline  Genee    . 
Madame  Karsavina  . 


Barefooted  Dancing  after  the  Greek 
Style  .... 

English  Position  in  Air  while  Diving 

Swedish  Swallow  Dive    . 


)SON  Frontispiece 
facing  page  I 
<S 
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02 
04 
0(3 


Ml 


DANCING,  BEAUTY 
AND  GAMES 

PHYSICAL  CULTURE 

TO  try  and  write  about  Physical  Culture 
without  linking  it  on  to  Mental  and 
Moral  Culture  would  be  of  little  use  or 
interest,  as  these  three  cannot  be  divided  and 
good  come  from  them,  any  more  than  a  tree 
can  be  separated  from  its  bark  and  leaves 
and  live.  It  is  true  that  many  have  realised 
the  great  and  undeniable  truth  that  Physical 
Culture  properly  used  is  also  mental  culture, 
but  it  is  also  true  that  the  masses  are 
absolutely  ignorant  of  this  fact,  and  merely 
think  that  the  person  who  believes  so  is  a 
harmless  lunatic.  That  it  is  within  the 
means  of  the  majority  to  have  a  powerful 
weapon   to   combat   sins   and  vice   that    at 

1  b 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

present  go  rampantly  on  their  way,  I  do 
most  sincerely  believe,  and  that  weapon  is 
a  right  understanding  of  the  effect  which 
Physical  Culture  has  on  the  mind  and  body ; 
and  that  ignorance  of  this  weapon  is  almost 
universal  amongst  the  masses  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  those  who  are  at  the  head  of 
things  do  not  understand  and  will  not  listen 
to  those  who  do,  or  take  the  time  and 
trouble  to  find  out  the  root  of  the  evils 
which  exist  to  such  an  enormous  extent, 
especially  throughout  towns. 

That  this  subject  has  been  handled  before 
by  far  more  skilled  writers  than  myself  T 
know  well,  but  in  most  of  the  articles  on 
Physical  Culture  there  is  a  great  dislike  to 
tackling  the  serious  side  of  the  question, 
and  my  excuse  for  doing  so  is  that  I  have 
spent  all  my  life  or  rather  all  my  thinking 
life  in  enquiring  into  and  trying  to  under- 
stand the  effect  Physical  Culture  has  on  the 
mind,  and  that  this  effect  is  tremendous  no 
one  who  knows  anything  about  the  subject 
can  doubt.     The  more  artificial  life  becomes, 

2 


PHYSICAL    CULTURE 

the  more  necessary  it  is  to  fight  the  evils 
which  arise  from  this  artificial  condition, 
and  personally  I  am  all  for  fighting  arti- 
ficiality with  nature.  Nature,  if  under- 
stood, seldom  fails  ns.  Many  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  pounds  are  spent  annually  on 
hospitals,  homes  for  the  feeble-minded,  &c. ; 
if  only  a  few  of  those  thousands  were  ex- 
pended in  our  schools,  and  in  the  proper 
teaching  of  the  young,  surely  in  a  couple 
of  generations  a  great  many  of  the  former 
institutions  would  be  empty.  And  until 
it  is  understood  that  to  help  the  human 
race  towards  real  health,  and  the  happiness 
that  marches  hand  in  hand  with  that  health, 
it  is  necessary  to  attack  and  demolish 
the  amazing  system  of  wicked  ignorance 
which  has  our  young  in  its  grip — both  rich 
and  poor — these  institutions  will  be  needed. 
For  long  it  has  been  the  cry,  give  every 
one  a  fair  chance,  and  I  do  most  sincerely 
believe  that  it  is  possible  to  give  that  chance 
by  turning  out  into  the  world  self-respect- 
ing men  and  women  mentally  and  physically 

3 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

developed  in  the  manner  that  I  believe 
God  meant  us  all  to  be ;  and  not  maimed 
body  and  soul  by  the  course  of  instruction 
we  have  been  put  through  before  we  are 
thrown  out  on  our  own  resources  to  struggle 
blindly  through  our  lives  as  best  we  may 
in  a  semi-developed  condition,  mentally  and 
physically :  some  of  us  perhaps  to  learn 
what  a  fine  thing  we  could  have  made  of 
life  if  only  we  had  known  and  understood 
sooner.  That  moral  feebleness  allied  to 
real  vice  is  tremendously  on  the  increase 
in  large  towns,  cannot  be  denied ;  also  that 
a  great  deal  of  it  has  its  beginning  in  school- 
life  is  well  known,  just  as  it  is  realised  by 
thinking  people  that  very  little  effort  is 
made  either  to  enquire  into  the  cause  of 
it  or  find  a  remedy.  It  seems  to  be  taken 
for  granted  that  if  a  young  boy  or  girl  shows 
moral  feebleness  there  is  nothing  much  to 
be  done  except  to  hope  that  they  will 
not  be  found  out  and  disgraced.  I  know 
well  that  to  cure  immorality  in  the  young 
once   it  has   established  itself,   is    difficult, 

4 


A  GOOD  POSH 
From  a  Photograph  by  Andrew  Paterson,  Inverness 


PHYSICAL   CULTURE 

though  not  by  any  means  hopeless.  Cures 
always  are  difficult  and  take  time ;  therefore 
prevention  is  so  much  simpler:  and  certainly 
a  great  deal,  if  not  all,  of  this  immorality 
could  be  prevented  if  Physical  Culture  and 
its  true  effects  on  body  and  mind  were 
understood,  and  the  teaching  of  a  right 
system  was  insisted  on  in  all  places  where 
the  young  gather  together. 

Let  me  try  and  explain  what  I  mean 
by  a  right  system.  It  is  not  just  a  different 
way  of  exercising  the  arms,  legs,  and  body. 
There  are  many  most  admirable  methods 
of  Physical  Culture,  composed  and  pro- 
pounded by  men  who  thoroughly  under- 
stand the  human  body  and  its  needs.  But 
what  I  think  is  wanting  in  our  teaching 
of  the  young  when  we  teach  them  at  all,  is 
the  giving  of  any  reason  as  to  why  they 
should  exercise  regularly  ;  beyond  the  rather 
feeble  fact  that  they  will  most  likely  feel 
better  if  they  do.  Give  children  a  true 
reason  for  doing  anything  and  they  will 
hold  on  to  it  throughout  life,  and  the  true 

5 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

reason  for  Physical  Culture  surely  is  that 
God  has  given  you  a  body  and  a  brain  to 
develop  to  the  best  of  your  ability,  and 
that  when  the  time  comes  to  render  them 
back  again  to  your  Maker  you  will  be  able 
to  do  so  with  no  sense  of  shame.  Instil 
this  into  the  young  and  it  is  wonderful 
how  they  understand  and  reverence  the 
thought.  To  merely  tell  children  that  it 
is  jolly  to  have  big  muscles  and  be  stronger 
than  their  neighbours,  will  certainly  urge 
them  on  for  the  moment,  but  these  reasons 
have  little  strength  or  help  in  them  if  there 
is  a  temptation  to  be  overcome,  and  to 
continue  to  use  them  is  but  building  upon 
sand. 

Children  are  born  idealists,  and  surely 
it  ought  to  be  the  duty  of  all  to  make  those 
ideals  higher  and  of  a  strength  that  will 
last  through  life.  The  only  ideal  that  the 
average  child  has  nowadays  is  'how  to 
get  on,'  and  in  the  getting  on  if  the  other 
fellow  goes  to  the  wall  no  matter ;  the 
ideal  of  Physical  and  Mental  culture  ought 

6 


PHYSICAL    CULTURE 

to  be  of  the  highest  and  the  greatest  purity, 
and  it  is  only  possible  to  instil  this  into 
the  very  young.  All  chance  of  pure  thinking 
as  regards  the  body  is  generally  entirely 
shattered  by  nurses  and  parents  before  a 
child  reaches  four  or  &ve  years  of  age :  its 
body  is  made  a  shameful  thing  to  hide  as 
much  as  possible  and  never  to  be  referred 
to.  If  you  want  to  feel  real  shame,  and 
understand  the  impure  manner  in  which 
the  body  is  regarded,  watch  small  children 
in  any  well-to-do  nursery  being  washed  by 
their  nurses ;  instead  of  being  taught  that 
their  body  is  a  beautiful  and  sacred  thing 
and  one  of  God's  greatest  works,  they  are 
made  to  believe  it  is  a  shameful  thing. 
Little  harmless  questions  that  all  children 
ask  and  which  ought  to  get  straight,  sensible 
answers,  are  greeted  with  giggles  or  winks, 
and  the  child  is  told  not  to  ask  naughty 
questions.  Thus  at  the  beginning  of  their 
lives  is  planted  the  little,  creeping,  insidious, 
dirty  growth.  All  children  will  think  about 
their  bodies,   it   is   right   and   natural   that 

7 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

they  should  do  so ;  only  those  thoughts 
must  be  guided  into  pure,  sensible  channels, 
not  left  in  black  ignorance,  except  for  the 
unclean  hints  dropped  by  many  who,  to 
our  shame  be  it  said,  have  children  in  their 
charge. 

To  instil  pure-mindedness,  a  child  from 
the  moment  it  can  understand  must  be 
taught  to  take  a  proper  pride  in  its  body, 
then  when  come  to  man  or  woman's  full 
growth,  a  clean-minded,  healthy,  happy, 
human  being  will  be  the  result,  and  during 
the  always  more  or  less  difficult  age  before 
full  growth  is  reached  there  need  be  little 
fear  of  the  dangers  and  temptations  which 
as  a  rule  beset  the  young. 

If  from  early  youth  it  was  explained 
and  impressed  on  the  young  of  both  sexes, 
that  it  was  a  real  sin  against  God  to  allow 
their  minds  to  become  a  mass  of  sensuality, 
and  that  the  mind  becoming  like  this  means 
that  the  body  has  been  neglected,  and  the 
only  right  remedy  for  body  and  mind  is 
proper  exercise  and  a  proper  understanding 

8 


RORY  DANCING 
From  a  Photograph  by  Andrew  Paterson 


PHYSICAL   CULTURE 

of  what  to  eat  and  what  to  avoid  in  eating 
and  drinking,  what  a  help  it  would  be  to 
them.  As  a  rale  this  is  never  explained 
to  the  young,  and  surely  its  great  import- 
ance ought  to  be  understood  at  least  by 
those  who  have  children  in  their  charge. 
The  ordinary  man  or  woman  fighting  the 
temptations  which  arise  from  the  artificial 
conditions  of  life,  are  as  helpless  from  their 
ignorance  and  neglect  of  the  human  body 
as  a  man  naked  fighting  against  one  fully 
armed. 

There  are  a  certain  number  of  men  and 
women  who  are  strong-minded  enough  to 
be  able  to  take  up  physical  exercises  late 
in  life  and  get  a  considerable  amount  of 
good  from  them,  but  with  the  majority  un- 
less the  exercises  are  a  habit  from  early 
youth,  they  find  them  a  bore  after  the 
novelty  has  worn  off,  and  they  are  eventually 
dropped  altogether.  It  is  a  very  great  effort 
for  a  man  or  woman  who  has  neglected  any 
regular  exercise  all  their  lives,  to  get  up 
in  the  morning  and  perform  a  certain  set 

9 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

amount.  But  if  a  child  is  trained  almost 
from  infancy  to  do  this,  and  made  to 
understand  that  it  is  quite  as  dirty  to 
neglect  the  body  or  to  put  dirty  (otherwise 
unwholesome)  food  into  it,  as  it  is  to  walk 
about  with  unwashed  teeth,  they  no  more 
think  of  neglecting  the  care  of  the  one 
than  they  do  of  the  other.  Therefore,  per- 
sonally, I  always  train  my  own  children  to 
exercise  ten  minutes  every  morning  before 
their  baths;  not  that  it  is  a  real  necessity 
when  living  an  open-air  life,  but  that  I  feel 
the  habit  will  go  with  them  through  life  5 
also  that  the  time  may  come  when  having 
to  be  in  town  it  may  prove  of  incalculable 
value.  At  present  they  would  no  more 
think  of  missing  their  exercises  than  they 
would  their  baths. 

Again,  I  think  great  help  against  the 
bad  and  harmful  habits  of  drinking  and 
smoking  can  be  given,  if  a  child  is 
taught  that  his  body  is  a  beautiful  and 
precious  trust,  and  that  to  soil  and  harm 
it  by  the  accumulation  of  bad  and  artificial 

10 


PHYSICAL   CULTURE 

habits  is  to  commit  a  real  sin,  and  also 
shows  a  considerable  lack  of  intelligence  if 
commenced  with  open  eyes  and  under- 
standing. Also,  if  the  explanation  is  given 
of  how  these  habits  grow  and  take  hold, 
if  once  started,  and  how  a  liking  for  them 
becomes  quickly  ingrained,  I  am  quite  sure 
that  boys  and  girls  would  no  more  make 
a  habit  of  these  harmful  things  than  they 
would  cheat  at  cards— as  in  one  case  you 
are  behaving  dishonourably  to  your  fellow- 
men,  in  the  other  you  are  betraying  a 
trust  given  into  your  hands  by  God ;  surely 
the  latter  ought  to  be  made  of  as  much 
importance  as  the  former.  It  is  all  very 
well  to  say  that  smoking  and  drinking  in 
moderation  harm  no  one ;  perhaps  not,  but 
the  difficulty  of  keeping  them  in  moderation 
is  very  great,  particularly  when  troubles 
come  along,  which  even  if  they  be  mole- 
hills in  reality,  to  the  young  are  always 
mountains,  and  it  seems  somewhat  foolish 
to  learn  and  encourage  an  artificial  habit 
which    may    at    any    time    prove    a    most 

11 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

dangerous  enemy,  and  is  certainly  not 
missed  if  never  begun. 

I  also  feel  most  strongly  that  it  will  be 
an  impossibility  to  make  Physical  Culture 
what  it  ought  to  be  until  a  radical  change 
is  made  in  present-day  clothing  for  both 
sexes. 

Revolutionise  the  clothing  of  children 
and  all  would  be  well,  as  if  sanely  clad 
during  their  growing  years,  they  certainly 
would  not  submit  in  later  life  to  the  absurd 
garments  worn  by  their  parents. 

I  do  not  suggest  that  every  one  should 
go  about  in  Greek  tunics,  as  this  garment  is 
not  very  suitable  to  our  grey  climate ;  but 
there  is  a  far  cry  between  a  Greek  tunic 
and  an  Eton  suit,  for  instance.  That  the 
garments  children  often  have  to  wear  are 
responsible  for  a  great  deal  of  immorality 
I  am  certain,  and  they  are  on  the  whole 
most  insanitary,  great  carriers  of  germs, 
and  intensely  uncomfortable  as  well.  There 
has  certainly  been  a  slight  move  for  the 
better    amongst    some    who    have    stopped 

12 


RORY,  TORQUIL   AND    HAMISH 
From  a  Photograph  by  Andrew  Paterson 


PHYSICAL    CULTUKE 

their  children  wearing  hats ;  thus  giving 
them  a  chance  to  grow  up  without  chronic 
headaches,  and  to  have  beautiful  hair.  Also 
a  few  now  give  their  children  a  shoe  that 
does  not  deform  their  feet  as  in  the  past, 
but  even  now  it  is  very  rarely  that  one 
sees  a  child  over  ten  years  of  age  with 
toes  that  are  not  crooked ;  for  it  does  not 
seem  to  be  realised  the  tremendous  pace 
a  child's  foot  grows  between  the  ages  of 
two  and  fifteen;  therefore  if  only  sandals 
were  used  for  growing  children  such  a  lot 
of  pain  and  expense  might  be  saved ;  a 
sandal  showing  at  once  if  it  is  too  small, 
and  also  is  much  cheaper  to  replace  than 
shoes,  or  those  still  greater  iniquities,  boots, 
which  cramp  the  muscles  of  the  legs  and 
stop  the  ankle  muscles  from  gaining  growth 
and  strength. 

I  know  that  many  people  will  contend 
that  the  mental  impurity  I  have  spoken  of 
is  the  exception  and  not  the  rule.  I  can 
but  ask  these  people  to  spend  an  afternoon 
in  the  sculpture  room  at  a  museum  or  in 

13 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

a  picture  gallery,  and  watch  the  majority 
of  those  who  come  through  and  see  the 
nudes  in  either  marble  or  on  canvas.  Apart 
from  a  few  serious  art  students  there  are 
generally  two  types,  the  one  who  passes 
by  with  averted  head  and  downcast  eyes, 
getting  slightly  red  in  doing  so ;  these  are 
generally  men  or  women  very  religious  from 
the  world's  point  of  view,  and  with  sad, 
contracted  minds.  They  pray,  but  at  the 
same  time  they  have  made  up  their  minds 
that  one  of  God's  most  splendid  works  is 
a  shameful  thing  to  be  covered  up,  neglected 
and  forgotten  as  much  as  possible. 

The  other  type  is  the  man  or  woman 
who  comes  to  stare  and  giggle,  and  nudge 
with  coarse  innuendo  and  joke.  These  are 
more  awful  than  the  others  to  watch,  as  they 
are  alive  with  a  horrible  wakefulness  coming 
from  minds  that  are  merely  cesspools. 

And  with  both  types  the  same  cause  is 
at  work  in  different  ways.  They  cannot 
see  a  naked  figure  either  in  life,  painting, 
or   sculpture   without   bringing   in   the   sex 

14 


PHYSICAL    CULTURE 

question.  They  can  see  no  beauty,  as  it  is 
obscured  by  the  grime  of  their  minds. 

Surely  a  state  of  things  to  make  one 
stand  aghast  with  bent  and  shamed  head. 

I  do  not  think  I  ever  realised  fully  the 
extreme  impurity  that  is  rife  through  the 
minds  particularly  of  those  who  live  in 
towns  until  I  went  on  to  the  stage,  and 
took  up  classical  dancing  seriously.  Then 
there  used  to  pour  in  upon  me  a  stream 
of  letters  of  such  a  terrible  kind  that  one 
wondered  it  were  possible  for  any  living 
being  who  had  a  soul  to  write  such  things, 
and  in  those  days  came  to  me  a  great  and 
sincere  wish  to  help  on  in  any  way  possible 
the  work  of  trying  to  establish  a  system  of 
Physical  and  Mental  Culture  that  should 
give  the  children  their  fair  chance  in  life  ; 
for  rich  and  poor  there  ought  to  be  but 
one  system,  and  that  instilled  in  a  manner 
to  give  to  them  a  knowledge  and  reverent 
love  of  all  that  is  God's  work,  to  bring 
within  the  reach  of  all  the  chance  to  keep 
the    body    beautiful    outwardly    and    clean 

15 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND   GAMES 

inwardly,  and  to  fill  the  mind  with  high 
ideals  and  a  fine  knowledge  of  men  and 
books.  May  we  all  try  and  make  it  more 
possible  and  easier  for  the  little  children 
to  walk  with  firm  and  unfaltering  footsteps 
the  path  that  ours  have  tottered  so  painfully 
along. 


16 


GAMES 

GAMES  are  nearly  always  regarded 
as  recreation,  though  a  few  people 
take  them  seriously  and  work  at  them  with 
a  view  to  becoming  professionals  and  earn- 
ing a  livelihood  in  this  manner.  When  I 
say  they  are  used  as  a  recreation,  this  is 
applicable  to  those  people  who  play  different 
games  in  a  desultory  fashion  during  the 
whole  or  part  of  the  year  ;  showing  as  time 
passes  curiously  little  improvement  in  their 
play.  Plodding  continuously  on,  but  from 
what  point  of  view  it  is  difficult  to  under- 
stand, unless  it  be  from  a  purely  animal 
liking  of  being  in  the  open  air  and  the 
pleasure  they  derive  from  following  after, 
hitting,  or  kicking  a  ball.  One  cannot  be- 
lieve that  they  can  get  any  pleasure  from 

17  c 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

the  competition  arising  in  games,  as  they 
never  strive  to  improve  their  play.  Many 
I  know  have  devoted  several  hours  weekly 
for  a  long  time  to  a  game,  but  they  play 
no  better  or  very  slightly  better  now  than 
when  they  commenced. 

If  one  remarks  on  the  rather  curious 
mental  condition  a  person  must  be  in  to  act 
like  this,  the  reply  generally  is,  '  Every  one 
cannot  play  games  well.  A  good  eye  is 
necessary,'  &c.  Certainly  that  is  so,  but  a 
good  eye  is  mostly  training  and  practice  like 
any  other  muscle  control.  Surely  if  a  thing 
is  worth  doing  at  all  it  is  worth  doing  well, 
and  I  think  that  any  one  who  gives  the 
matter  a  few  moments'  thought  will  agree 
that  it  is  extremely  harmful  physically  and 
mentally  to  go  on  doing  a  thing  in  the  wrong 
way  year  after  year.  It  denotes  lack  of 
concentration,  lack  of  self-control,  and  a 
general  mental  sloppiness.  Curiously  enough 
these  people  are  always  the  ones  who  con- 
tinually ask  others  to  teach  and  help  them 
to  improve  their  play,  but  an  endeavour  to 

18 


GAMES 

do  so  is  nearly  always  greeted  with  a  laugh, 
and,  'Oh,  yes,  I  see,'  and  they  go  steadily 
on  with  the  same  faults  as  before,  though 
quite  often  showing  that  with  a  little  con- 
centration and  control  they  might  have 
become  admirable  players.  This  class  of 
game-player,  I  feel  sure,  has  developed  from 
the  child  who  has  been  allowed  to  under- 
take its  games  and  its  work  in  a  slipshod 
fashion,  never  being  made  to  realise  that  if 
a  game  or  a  piece  of  work  is  taken  up  it 
should  either  be  done  well  and  completely  or 
left  alone.  By  this  I  naturally  do  not  mean 
that  all  amateurs  ought  not  to  play  a  game 
unless  they  play  it  like  a  professional,  but 
there  is  a  very  far  cry  between  profession- 
alism and  the  slipshod  game-player.  The 
next  type  of  man  who  plays  games  is  the 
one  who  does  so  purely  from  the  health- 
giving  point  of  view  and  not  from  any  real 
love  of  games,  doing  so  most  likely  only 
when  he  is  a  bit  off  colour,  and  in  vulgar 
parlance,  wishes  to  have  a  good  sweat !  A 
Turkish  bath  would  have  as  good  an  effect, 

19 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND    GAMES 

but  he,  like  a  good  many  others,  cannot  be 
bothered  to  seek  after  health  unless  his  mind 
is  stimulated  and  amused  at  the  same  time. 
He  is  not  really  of  much  interest  from  the 
game -playing  point  of  view,  as  he  enters 
into  the  world  of  games  but  little. 

At  the  opposite  extreme  is  to  be  found  the 
man  who  takes  games  seriously,  though  this 
type  is  really  divided  into  two  classes  ;  one 
who  plays  games  to  keep  fit,  and  the  other 
who  keeps  fit  to  play  games.  The  latter,  of 
course,  are  the  men  with  a  real  devotion  to 
games  who  spend  little  time  doing  any- 
thing else  ;  at  all  events,  during  the  season 
when  their  own  particular  game  is  to  the 
fore.  The  questions  I  think  one  is  inclined 
to  ask  oneself,  when  seriously  thinking  over 
games,  are :  in  what  spirit  ought  games 
to  be  taken  ?  Are  they  a  waste  of  time  or 
not  ?  and  are  they  of  real  good  mentally  and 
physically  to  the  player  ?  I  have  always 
personally  felt  that  games,  regarded  as  they 
are  at  the  present  day,  are  extremely  bad, 
but  if  taken  in  a  sane  and  sensible  fashion 

20 


GAMES 

ought  to  be  of  the  greatest  value.  This  is 
what  I  mean.  Children  when  they  start  to 
play  games  are  nearly  always  allowed  to  do  so 
in  a  most  haphazard  manner ;  for  instance, 
a  child  who  shows  a  strong  fancy  for  games 
is  often  left  to  play  them  ad  lib.,  only  being 
reproved  if  his  school-work  suffers,  and 
often  a  lenient  eye  is  turned  on  all  shirking 
of  work  if  the  shirker  is  found  to  have  used 
the  time  for  game- playing.  It  is  rarely 
explained  to  him  or  her  that  games  ought 
to  be  regarded  as  a  recreation  and  an  aid  to 
health,  also  that  if  played  they  ought  to  be 
played  properly  at  proper  times.  Shirking 
your  other  work  to  play  them  or  playing 
them  badly  is  misusing  both  your  body  and 
mind,  and  generally  hurting  yourself  physi- 
cally and  mentally. 

Games  must  be  looked  at  in  their  proper 
proportion  and  once  finished  with  not 
allowed  to  usurp  the  mind,  as  a  man  who 
makes  games  his  sole  thought  throughout 
life  is  a  sad  person  to  meet.  If  the  child 
who   was    backward    and   rather    stupid  at 

21 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

games  was  taken  a  little  trouble  with  and 
equally  taught  with  his  more  forward  brother 
that  games  are  to  be  regarded  educationally 
like  any  other  physical  exercise,  I  think  that 
as  grown  men  they  would  both  be  improved. 
On  the  one  hand,  you  would  not  find  the  man 
who  does  not  play  games  at  all,  from  having 
been  told  when  a  child  that  he  was  no 
use ;  and  on  the  other,  the  man  who  eats, 
thinks,  talks,  and  sleeps  games:  but  two 
human  beings  with  the  good  health,  concen- 
tration, quickness,  and  self-control  which 
games  properly  used  certainly  bring,  all  of 
which  are  most  admirable  qualities  having 
a  very  great  effect  on  a  man's  life  in 
all  and  every  profession.  A  man  of  the 
above  qualities,  added  to  a  clean  outdoor 
sense  of  things,  is  far  more  apt  to  make 
a  success  of  his  life  from  the  higher  point 
of  view  than  the  one  without  them.  Equally 
this  reacts  on  his  children.  The  man  of 
control  and  understanding  will  most  as- 
suredly see  that  his  children  are  trained  to 
have  the  same  qualities. 

22 


GAMES 

I  do  not  think  it  can  be  repeated  too 
often  what  great  harm  can  he  done  to 
children,  and,  alas !  is  done  both  physically 
and  mentally,  by  allowing  them  to  play 
games  at  all  times  and  in  any  manner  they 
please.  It  is  quite  time  it  was  realised  that 
during  the  period  the  brain  and  body  are 
developing,  enormous  care  ought  to  be  taken 
in  the  supervision  of  all  bodily  exercises,  for 
that  their  effect  is  very  great  on  the  brain 
only  the  ignorant  will  deny.  A  child  left  to 
exercise  itself  at  games  will  as  a  rule  play 
till  it  is  dead  beat,  thus  undoing  any  good 
that  might  come  to  it  from  the  exercise  of 
its  muscles  and  mind,  as  long  before  it  has 
got  to  this  stage  of  tiredness  it  will  have 
been  hitting  wrong,  running  wrong,  and 
forcing  the  heart  to  overwork.  Mentally  it 
will  be  over-excited,  the  eye  will  be  strained, 
and  the  temper  out  of  control.  One  of  the 
great  advantages  of  games  is  the  teaching  of 
tolerance  and  self-control,  but  when  a  thing 
is  young  and  tender  it  does  not  do  to  bear 
too  heavily  on  it.   Whereas  judicious  exercise 

23 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

strengthens  a  weak  thing,  heavy  work  will 
merely  spoil  it,  and  in  all  probability  ruin  it 
for  all  time.  How  often  one  sees  a  child 
burst  into  tears  for  no  obvious  reason, 
become  irritable  and  bad-tempered,  and 
when  bedtime  comes  lie  awake  for  hours. 
The  cause  nearly  always  being  the  ignorance 
of  teachers  and  parents  who  in  their  mis- 
taken kindness  allow  children  to  play  games 
until  they  can  hardly  walk  with  fatigue. 
I  have  often  been  asked  if  I  advocate  games 
for  children ;  before  the  ages  of  ten  or  eleven 
years  old  I  certainly  do  not,  and  between 
those  ages  and  sixteen,  I  think  games  ought 
to  be  most  carefully  supervised  and  chosen, 
and  for  these  reasons.  From  infancy  up  to 
eleven  years  is  a  most  critical  period,  the 
most  critical  I  personally  believe  in  the 
whole  life.  When  a  young  child  is  playing 
games  it  is  most  difficult,  in  fact  almost 
impossible,  to  get  it  to  remember  several 
things  at  once.  What  I  mean  is  this. 
A  young  child  at  this  period  is  merely 
learning  everything,  how  to   walk,   how  to 

24 


GAMES 

run,  and  how  to  balance  itself  correctly.  The 
meaning  of  perfect  poise  ought  at  this  age 
to  be  installing  itself  into  a  child's  mind ;  in 
the  excitement  of  the  game  a  child  as  a  rule 
tries  to  do  too  much,  with  the  result  that  in 
a  short  space  of  time  it  will  be  walking  badly 
and  heavily,  and  running  in  an  ugly,  un- 
certain fashion. 

Then  there  are  very  few  games  which 
do  not  draw  the  body  forward,  contracting 
the  chest,  in  consequence  of  which  the 
breathing  is  restricted,  which  naturally 
renders  the  blood  impure,  this  leading  to  a 
thousand  troubles.  Also  I  do  not  believe  it 
is  good  or  natural  for  any  young  undeveloped 
thing  to  be  knocked  about  in  the  way  that 
happens  in  a  good  many  games,  as  the 
muscles  and  bones  are  soft  and  apt  to  be 
distorted  easily.  Children  in  a  natural 
rough-and-tumble  amongst  themselves  are 
no  more  likely  to  hurt  themselves  or  each 
other  than  puppies  or  any  other  young 
animal  at  play,  but  bring  in  the  competition 
and  the  unnatural  excitement  which  creeps 

25 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

into  games  that  after  all  are  an  artificial 
amusement,  more  harm  than  good  is  likely  to 
result  to  children  under  sixteen  years  of  age. 
After  that  age,  regarded  in  their  proper 
proportion,  I  think  they  are  excellent. 
I  am  a  firm  believer  for  the  young  in  in- 
dividual athletic  exercises  such  as  running, 
jumping,  throwing  the  hammer,  the  discus, 
swimming  and  dancing,  &c*,  but  under  the 
eye  always  of  an  experienced  person,  as  in 
these  exercises  it  is  possible  to  control  and 
watch  the  work  of  each  child,  to  see  and 
teach  that  each  muscle  is  developed  in 
proper  fashion,  and  by  degrees  the  girl  or 
boy  will  understand  how  to  control  the 
whole  body  in  a  perfect  manner,  each  and 
every  muscle  hardening  and  enlarging  to  its 
full  development.  If  this  form  of  physical 
education  is  carried  out  from  infancy,  at 
sixteen  years  old  a  girl  or  boy  ought  to  be 
fit  to  take  up  any  game  they  may  have  a 
fancy  for,  reaping  the  great  good  that 
certainly  may  be  got  from  games  and 
equally  avoiding  the  great  harm. 

26 


BEAUTY 


TO  instil  a  love  of  beauty  into  a  child's 
mind  at  the  commencement  of  its  life 
is  not  necessary,  as  normal  children  will 
always  hold  out  their  hands  and  seek  to 
draw  towards  them  all  that  is  beautiful, 
instinctively  turning  away  and  shrinking 
from  the  hideous  and  grotesque.  But  what 
is  necessary  is  to  foster,  protect,  and  en- 
courage this  natural  gift,  and  it  is  only  too 
evident  that  this  necessity  is  not  only 
neglected,  but  that  the  love  of  the  hideous 
and  grotesque  is  actually  forced  into  the 
minds  of  the  young,  and  the  growth  of 
that  love  helped  on  in  every  possible  way. 
There  are  many  who  scoff  at  the  belief 
that  the  love  and  true  realisation  of  all 
beauty  ought  to  be  one  of  the  most  serious 

27 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND    GAMES 

sides  in  the  education  of  the  young,  but 
I  think  it  would  behove  them  to  give  a  few 
hours'  serious  consideration  to  the  subject, 
before  dismissing  it  with  one  of  the  con- 
temptuous laughs  that  are  so  freely  given 
by  the  people  who  have  never  taken  the 
trouble  to  probe  very  deeply  into  any  new 
effort  or  idea  that  may  come  their  way. 
Not  that  the  idea  of  instilling  the  love  and 
understanding  of  beauty  into  the  young  is 
a  new  one,  as  in  ancient  Greece  it  was  a 
recognised  part  of  all  education,  but  most 
certainly  for  many  and  many  a  generation 
it  has  never  been  given  a  thought  to,  except 
in  isolated  cases.  I  do  not  think  it  would 
be  a  waste  of  time  if  some  of  our  best 
brains  at  the  head  of  things  would  give 
some  serious  consideration  from  a  purely 
common- sense  point  of  view,  as  to  whether 
it  may  not  stand  within  the  bounds  of 
reason  that  a  very  large  part  of  the 
decadence,  vice,  and  educational  failure  is 
not  largely  due  to  the  entire  lack  in  that 
education  of  any  effort  being  made  to  teach 

28 


BEAUTY 

the  difference  between  the  ugly  and  the 
beautiful. 

Sin  and  vice  are  strangely  like  unto 
ugliness  and  repulsiveness.  Equally,  clean- 
liness and  culture  of  mind,  body,  and  spirit 
are  not  mean  reflectors  of  the  beautiful.  It 
is  not  difficult  to  realise  that  perhaps  the 
neglect  of  teaching  the  one  has  a  good  deal 
to  do  with  the  existence  of  the  other.  That 
a  most  drastic  change  in  this  direction 
would  be  greatly  for  the  benefit  of  all 
children  I  most  firmly  believe.  The  richest 
and  the  poorest  ought  to  have  the  same 
chance  of  being  allowed  to  keep  that 
wonderful  gift,  a  love  of  beauty,  which  is  a 
heritage  to  all,  and  not  to  have  it  snatched 
away  only  to  be  replaced  by  that  which  will 
cause  them  to  go  mentally  blind  through  life, 
missing  all  the  joy  which  comes  to  those 
who  can  see  with  undimmed  eyes  the  wonders 
that  God  has  placed  in  the  world  for  all. 

A  love  of  the  obviously  beautiful  I  do 
not  think  is  of  any  great  help  or  value, 
though  naturally  better   than   entire  blind- 

29 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

ness :  to  only  admire  what,  so  to  speak, 
shrieks  its  beauty  at  you,  takes  no  great 
understanding  or  discrimination.  Neither 
does  it  take  great  powers  of  observation. 
Stone-blindness  would  have  to  be  the 
portion  of  the  man  who  was  not  more  or 
less  impressed  by  the  Grand  Canyon  or 
Niagara  Falls.  But  to  see  and  rejoice  over 
little  pools  with  the  light  throwing  different 
shadows,  a  drop  of  dew  hanging  on  a 
blade  of  grass,  or  a  myriad  other  miniature 
miracles,  which  happen  around  us  day  and 
night,  takes  a  power  of  observation  and 
realisation  that  lies  only  in  the  human  being 
who  has  had  his  eye  trained  to  observe  and 
his  mind  to  feel  and  rejoice  in  all  beauty, 
whether  it  be  great  or  small,  the  largely 
obvious  or  that  which  requires  careful 
looking  for. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  a  power  of 
observation  is  of  great  value  in  all  walks 
of  life ;  allied  to  a  powerful  memory  it  is  of 
still  greater  value.  Both  of  these  can  be 
taught  to  a  great  extent  by  encouraging  the 

30 


BEAUTY 

children  in  their  love  of  the  beautiful,  which 
ought  to  be  commenced  in  the  observation 
and  understanding  of  God's  work  in  Nature. 
The  millions  of  beautiful  things  by  which 
He  has  surrounded  us  are  generally  entirely 
unnoticed  and  ignored  by  the  average  child, 
and  the  wonderful  reading  of  that  book  of 
Nature  He  has  laid  before  us  to  instruct 
and  help,  is  indeed  a  closed  book  except  to 
the  very  few.  That  Nature -study  is  taught 
in  many  schools  I  am  fully  aware,  but  it 
is  taught  as  a  rule  in  a  purely  scientific 
manner,  which  at  once  does  away  with  any 
chance  of  establishing  high  ideals  by  its 
help.  Flowers  are  pulled  to  pieces,  their 
growth  and  formation  explained;  a  drop  of 
water  is  taken,  placed  under  a  microscope, 
and  the  germs  in  it  pointed  out.  That  this 
is  excellent  and  ought  to  be  known  and 
understood  by  all,  I  do  not  for  a  moment 
deny,  but  its  place  is  secondary;  God's 
unspoken  lesson  of  beauty  in  Nature  is 
surely  a  far  greater  one  than  what  man  has 
found  out  about  His  work,  and  if  this  is  the 

31 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

case,  it  seems  to  rue  that  the  first  lesson  of 
all  that  ought  to  be  taught  to  the  young  is 
to  look  for  and  find  all  the  beauties  expressed 
in  Nature.  The  colours  and  the  scent  of  the 
flowers,  the  way  they  group  themselves,  the 
fashion  in  which  they  turn  and  seek  the  sun ; 
to  hear  the  music  in  the  streams  composed 
of  a  hundred  different  notes,  to  lie  and 
watch  the  many  changing  lights  and  colours 
on  running  waters,  to  love  the  reflections  in 
the  pools  and  to  learn  to  wander  in  that 
children's  second  land  '  under  the  water,'  or 
to  watch  in  breathless  wonder  the  ripple  of 
the  soft  summer  breezes  across  that  dry 
land- sea,  the  bit  of  rough  ground  with  tall 
grasses  of  many  kinds  in  full  bloom;  some 
almost  pigeon-blood  in  colour,  others  pure 
gold.  To  hear  the  voices  of  the  wood-people 
complaining  as  the  wind-god  moving  through 
the  trees  disturbs  them,  or  in  his  anger  storms 
along  on  wintry  days  and  nights,  calling  out 
in  his  wrath  to  the  thunder  and  lightning  to 
come  and  join  him  on  his  noisy  way.  All 
idealistic  and  fanciful,  no  doubt. 

32 


BEAUTY 

But  who  will  deny  that  the  man  or 
woman  who  can  see  and  hear  clearly  the 
voices  of  Nature,  and  who  has  the  power  to 
weave  happy,  harmless  fancies,  is  not  a  better 
and  more  pure-minded  person  than  one  who 
outside  of  his  own  profession  can  neither 
see  nor  hear,  and  if  placed  apart  from  that 
profession  is  helpless  and  miserably  bored. 
If  unhappiness  comes  to  him  in  his  chosen 
work,  he  knows  not  where  to  seek  help  and 
distraction  in  a  clean  and  healthy  way.  It 
has  often  been  said  that  Mother  Nature  is  a 
great  healer:  she  most  certainly  is  when  we 
are  given  a  chance  of  finding  and  knowing 
her,  but  to  the  average  human  being  her 
existence  may  be  known  of,  but  the  way  of 
reaching  her  healing  touch  is  a  road  care- 
fully guarded,  and  hidden  away  out  of  sight, 
except  to  the  adventurous  few  who  have 
strength  of  mind  to  struggle  on  against  all 
difficulties  and  seek  her  for  themselves. 

Surely  we  have  no  right  not  to  lay  open 
to  the  best  of  our  abilities  this  road  of 
happiness  and  comfort  to  all  children  ;   to 

33  d 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

shut  them  out  into  a  materialistic  darkness 
of  mind,  to  crush  that  love  of  beauty  that 
God  has  thought  right  to  instil  into  every 
infant  mind.  Instead,  there  are  a  great 
many  parents  and  teachers  banded  together 
with  one  object,  that  being  to  destroy  and 
stamp  out  any  love  of  beauty  that  may  peep 
out  from  a  child's  mind,  to  uproot  it  and 
there  plant  instead  a  million  growths  of 
rank  and  ugly  thoughts  all  overshadowed  by 
one  great  primary  planted  tree  whose  name 
is  the  love  of  the  ugly  and  grotesque ;  from 
it  branches  another  smaller  tree  called  the 
power  of  being  able  only  to  see  the  bad; 
creeping  up  this  is  the  worm  of  blindness 
to  all  God's  teaching  of  Nature.  A  truly 
terrible  garden  indeed,  and  apt  to  bear  fruit 
plentifully  now  and  afterwards. 

I  went  to  one  of  London's  largest  toy- 
shops the  other  day  and  there  bought  some 
toys  which  can  be  seen  in  the  following 
photograph.  I  was  told  that  they  were  very 
popular,  and  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that 
sane  people  can  give  their  children  toys  of 

34 


GROTESQUE   TOYS 


BE AFT Y 

this  kind,  and  not  realise  in  any  way  the 
irreparable  harm  they  are  doing  to  their 
minds,  particularly  as  most  small  infants 
will  turn  shuddering  from  this  ugliness 
presented  to  them,  but  are  coaxed  into 
thinking  they  like  these  hideous  things, 
until  they  really  do  come  to  take  a  pleasure 
in  them.  So  the  first  great  lesson  of  man's 
teaching  is  learnt,  taken  into  your  heart  and 
mind  the  ugly  and  repulsive  thought  and 
thing  that  God  tells  you  instinctively  to 
turn  from  and  beware  of.  A  feAV  years  of 
this  teaching  and  God's  voice  of  instinct 
grows  dim  and  at  last  ceases.  So  we  wil- 
fully and  of  our  own  accord  strike  out  of 
our  children's  lives  one  great  help  and  safe- 
guard, instead  of  aiding  them  to  develop 
and  strengthen  it,  so  as  to  get  all  the  joy 
and    happiness    possible    from    this    great 

gift. 

It  may  be  agreed  that  a  love  of  beauty 
has    brought     many    a     man    and    woman 
to   sin,    and   it    is    true   that  such   a    love 
superficial    and  untrained,  may  well  do   so. 

35 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

But    that  love,    trained  and  instilled   into 
the  human   mind   along    with   a   deep   and 
reverent  understanding,  can  only  be  of  the 
greatest  help  and  benefit.     In  this  case  the 
beauty  and    purity  of  the   soul,   and    that 
wondrous   temple,  the  human  body,  would 
prove  too   strong  a  responsibility  to   allow 
the  mind  to  smirch  them  with  sin  and  vice. 
In  advocating  that  children  should  be  taught 
to  see  Nature's  works  with  clear  eyes,  I  do 
not  mean    that    the    many  wonderful    and 
beautiful  works  of  Man  should  be  ignored : 
only  with  God's  works  we  can  roam  amongst 
them,  knowing   that    what  they   teach   can 
only  be   good;  with  Men's   we   must   walk 
warily,  picking  out  for  the  help  of  the  young 
only  those   things  that    speak  of  fine   and 
pure  intention,  and  that  can  start  no  train 
of  impure  thought.    Of  the  greatest  influence 
for  good,  I  put  the  sculpture  of  the  ancient 
Greeks  foremost :    it  cannot  be  studied  too 
much  by  the   young;  the   more  it  is  loved 
and  understood  the  more  lessons  it  teaches, 
a  deep  and  wide  sense  of  extreme  quietness 

36 


BEAUTY 

and  nobility,  an  understanding  and  reverence 
in  the  truest  sense  of  the  word  for  the 
beauty  of  the  human  body,  to  mar  or  ill- 
treat  which  was  a  sin  against  all  that  was 
highest  in  them.  A  great  patience  and  an 
almost  superhuman  effort  and  striving  to- 
wards all  that  was  greatest  and  best,  a 
reaching  out  of  mind  and  soul  to  do  honour 
to  Him  who  made  them ;  what  matter  if  their 
gods  were  many,  the  effort  and  the  reve- 
rence were  the  same,  and  as  such  will  surely 
be  recorded. 

Will  ever  a  quarter  be  understood  as 
to  what  we  owe  these  ancient  masters  of 
art,  the  help  they  have  been  to  thousands 
in  their  gentle  and  sincere  teaching — only 
thousands,  alas !  for  of  the  millions  of  people 
reared  and  taught  in  our  country,  it  is  the 
few  who  find  out  by  accident  or  design  the 
beauties  and  wonders  of  their  works  ?  It  is 
true  that  bodies  of  school  -  children  are 
escorted  at  intervals  to  the  British  Museum, 
where  they  are  shown  round  by  some  one 
who  is    supposed  to  have  a    knowledge  of 

37 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

the  contents.  Many  a  time  have  I  watched 
the  groups  with  a  sad  heart,  realising  how 
much  help  and  joy  they  were  missing.  '  That 
is  a  statue  by  So-and-so,  400  B.C.,'  on  and 
on  from  one  thing  to  another,  merely  a 
jumble  of  names  and  dates ;  no  aid  given  to 
those  muddled  young  minds  towards  their 
seeing  and  understanding  the  beauty  they 
are  gazing  at ;  no  chance  given  them  to 
take  in  the  message  of  purity  and  quietness 
that  those  great  works  send  forth  ever- 
lastingly to  those  who  have  learnt  to  see 
and  hear.  What  good  is  there  in  knowing 
a  list  of  famous  names  if  the  knowledge 
ceases  at  that,  and  the  work  that  made  those 
names  famous  is  unknown  and  unrealised  ? 
The  human  being  Avho  feels  a  great  humility 
and  thankfulness  before  all  beauty,  whether 
God's  work  or  Man's,  says  a  truer  and  more 
sincere  prayer  than  he  who  sits  in  church 
and  parrot-like  repeats  long  prayers  to  the 
God  whose  work  he  either  knows  not,  or 
does  his  best  to  destroy. 

We   are  told   in   the  Bible   that   we   arc 

38 


BEAUTY 

made  in  the  likeness  of  God.  It  is  wonder- 
ful how  far  we  have  managed  to  stray  from 
it,  and  how  determined  we  are  that  our 
children  shall  have  no  chance  to  attain  to 
it.  With  studious  care  have  we  built  up 
year  by  year  a  mass  of  customs  and  habits 
that  successfully  bar  us  from  anything  much 
higher  in  appearance  than  the  apes  some 
think  we  are  descended  from.  Sometimes 
one  sees  a  human  face  and  body  that  has 
been  strong  enough  to  struggle  into  maturity 
unmarked  and  maimed  in  spite  of  Man's 
laws,  and  when  we  see  such  a  one,  it  is  with 
a  heart  full  of  wrath  and  pity  that  we  gaze 
around  on  the  crippled,  hideous  bodies  that 
might  be  like  unto  gods  walking,  and  are 
merely  distorted  shapes,  breeding  further 
shapes  still  more  distorted,  and  a  vista  of 
horror  is  opened  in  the  mind,  and  one  seems 
to  hear  the  cries  of  millions  of  unborn 
children,  each  generation  a  little  more  hor- 
rible to  look  at;  with  minds  a  little  lower 
and  more  sin-filled,  and  with  less  and  less 
hope  of  gaining  all  that  has  been  lost.    More 

39 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

lives  to  work  out  their  own  hell,  fewer  to 
live  in  Heaven. 

To  keep  a  child's  mind  filled  with  beau- 
tiful thoughts,  and  let  their  eyes  see  only 
beautiful  things  is,  I  know  well,  a  difficult 
matter  nowadays,  since  we  have  filled  the 
world  with  hideous  things  and  the  minds  of 
those  about  us  with  ugly  thoughts,  but  the 
importance  of  doing  so  is,  as  I  have  said 
before,  very  great.  It  seems  to  me  as  if 
beautiful  ideas  and  things  have  a  very  slight, 
delicate  growth  in  the  brain  while  it  is  in 
its  early  development,  while  the  ugly  and 
grotesque  takes  hold  with  giant  roots,  and 
once  allow  the  latter  to  creep  in  first,  it  will 
oust  all  after  attempts  to  replace  it  with  the 
delicate  plant  of  beauty.  But  keep  the 
mind  well  stocked  with  all  that  is  beautiful, 
and  by  the  time  the  brain  and  body  are 
developed,  these  plants  will  have  attained  to 
such  strong  and  noble  proportions  that  little 
fear  need  be  felt  of  the  others  finding  any 
space  to  live  in  and  flourish. 

There  is   a  great  deal  of  talk  nowadays 

40 


BEAUTY 

about  Eugenics  and  theories  on  improving 
the  human  race.  It  might  be  well  worth 
the  experiment  to  try  how  the  gospel  of 
beauty  taught  in  the  deepest  and  truest 
sense  might  succeed  where  everything  else 
has  failed ;  if  we  were  educated  to  see  ugli- 
ness, mental  and  physical,  as  sins  of  the 
most  serious  description  against  our  Maker, 
whether  would  it  not  prove  a  very  powerful 
help  towards  the  uplifting  of  the  human 
race  from  the  mire  in  which  it  at  present 
lies. 


41 


TEACHERS 

HAVING  tried  to  show  how  important 
the  teaching  of  the  love  of  beauty 
is  to  children,  and  how  important  it  is 
during  the  early  development  of  the  brain 
to  keep  all  that  is  bad  and  repulsive  away, 
and  only  present  the  good  and  the  beautiful, 
it  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  say  a  little 
on  the  subject  as  to  the  difficulty  of  getting 
teachers  who  have  ever  given  these  ideas  a 
thought,  and  if  asked  to  carry  out  one's 
wishes  on  this  subject  simply  regard  one 
as  a  harmless  lunatic.  A  few  are  con- 
scientious enough  to  make  efforts,  but  even 
these  are  a  hopeless  failure,  and  for  this 
reason,  if  no  thought  has  been  given  during 
the  years  of  training  as  to  the  necessity  of 

43 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

keeping  ugliness,  physical  and  mental,  from 
children,  it  is  almost  impossible,  unless 
unusually  gifted  in  self-control,  to  restrain 
one's  self  a  hundred  times  an  hour  from 
doing  or  saying  something  ugly  before 
children ;  also,  with  the  best  endeavours  in 
the  world,  the  deplorable  fact  remains  that 
the  great  majority  do  not  know  what  is 
ugly  and  what  is  beautiful. 

Nine  years  ago,  I  started  with  a  light 
heart  and  a  happy  mind  to  educate  my 
eldest  son  in  the  way  in  which  I  considered 
all  children  ought  to  be  educated :  in  other 
words  only  pure  and  good  thoughts  were 
to  be  instilled  into  his  mind,  and  he  was 
never  to  have  the  ugly  and  grotesque  forced 
on  his  notice.  My  difficulties  began  with 
my  first  nurse,  and  they  have  gone  on  in- 
creasing through  a  series  of  nurses  and 
governesses.  That  they  should  not  under- 
stand one's  ideas  on  the  subject  was  not 
surprising,  as  their  upbringing  made  these 
ideas  a  closed  book  to  them ;  but  what  was 
so   heart-breaking  was   that  after  hours  of 

U 


TEACHERS 

explaining  and  reasoning,  and  eventually  in 
despair  almost  extorting  promises  that  they 
should  endeavour  to  speak  only  what  was 
truthful  and  good,  and  that  they  should 
refrain  from  ugly  tales  and  dirty  ideas,  it 
began  to  dawn  on  me  that  most  of  these 
people  who  take  charge  of  children  do  not 
know  the  difference  between  what  is  good 
and  what  is  bad  for  children  to  see  and 
hear,  and  all  the  explaining  in  the  world 
could  not  teach  them:  proving  that  unless 
the  study  of  these  things  is  undertaken  in 
youth,  it  is  of  little  use  later  in  life  to  try 
and  learn  it.  Some  of  them  really  tried, 
they  genuinely  wished  to  please  me,  but  it 
was  hopeless  from  my  point  of  view ;  in  fact, 
I  was  talking  a  strange  tongue  to  them,  and 
with  the  best  endeavours  they  could  not 
understand  a  language  they  had  never 
learnt.  It  is  certainly  not  my  wish  to  decry 
the  faithful  service  that  nurses  have  given 
to  their  charges,  a  good  deal  more  faithful 
than  many  mothers.  But  what  I  do  want 
to  point  out  is  that  the  training  of  nurses 

45 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

and  teachers  is  as  a  rule  far  from  what  it 
ought  to  be,  and  until  this  training  is  most 
thoroughly  altered  it  is  worse  than  useless 
to  try  and  raise  the  education  of  children  to 
a  higher  and  purer  level.  First  of  all,  it 
must  be  recognised  that  these  people  on 
whom  the  future  of  our  young  so  largely 
depends  ought  to  be  the  most  respected  and 
honoured  amongst  people,  and  this  feeling 
of  responsibility  and  honour  ought  to  be 
ingrained  in  the  minds  of  those  who  intend 
to  enter  the  vocations  of  nursing  or  teaching. 
Not,  as  so  often  is  the  case,  that  teaching  is 
taken  up  when  a  failure  is  made  at  other 
professions,  and  when  you  find  in  rich 
houses  that  the  teachers  or  nurses  of  the 
children  are  paid  considerably  less  than  the 
cook  or  butler.  Until  teaching  is  put  upon 
its  proper  pedestal  and  regarded  as  the 
most  honoured  of  professions,  and  one  not 
to  be  entered  into  lightly,  so  will  education 
remain  at  its  present  low  level. 

It  is  constantly  being  said  that  there  are 
so  many  clever  women  leaving  our  colleges 

46 


TEACHERS 

each  year,  and  finding  it  difficult  to  earn  a 
livelihood :  surely  teaching  ought  to  give 
many  of  them  a  profession  in  life ;  but  until 
the  profession  is  regarded  rightly,  as  one  of 
the  most  high  and  sacred  callings,  clever 
men  and  women  will  consider  it  beneath 
them,  or  only  to  be  used  as  a  step  towards 
something  better.  Certainly,  latterly,  there 
has  been  some  improvement  in  the  methods 
of  imparting  knowledge  to  the  young,  but 
I  am  afraid  that  these  methods  have  not 
always  been  used  for  the  good  only  of  the 
child.  Too  many  good  teachers  are  given 
to  cramming  infants'  minds  to  an  extent 
extremely  harmful,  only  caring  to  produce 
on  examination  days  tiny  children  who  can 
repeat  pages  of  verse  and  prose — in  other 
words,  at  the  expense  of  the  child's  health  and 
mind,  they  nurture  their  own  vanity,  showing 
that  their  idea  of  responsibility  is  as  lax  as 
their  knowledge  of  the  delicate  structure 
they  undertake  to  build  up.  The  ignorance 
of  the  people  to  whom  children  are  entrusted 
on  the  science  of  Pedagogy  is  truly  amazing. 

47 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

They  know  nothing  about  the  body,  and 
still  less  about  the  working  of  a  child's 
brain.  They  do  not  know  what  is  harmful 
physically,  or  what  effect  body  has  on  brain, 
or  vice-versa;  they  have  a  smattering  of 
Physical  Culture  and  this  is  used  indis- 
criminately, and  they  cannot  be  blamed,  as 
they  have  never  been  taught  even  the  rudi- 
ments of  a  science  which  they  ought  to 
know  thoroughly  before  they  essay  to  teach. 
For  it  is,  I  am  certain,  this  entire  lack  of 
knowledge  as  to  the  brain  and  body  and  the 
effect  of  one  on  the  other,  that  leads  to  so 
much  distress  and  sin,  and  that  is  such  a 
handicap  in  any  efforts  that  are  made  to  fill 
the  mind  with  only  what  is  worth  while. 
Excellent  methods  such  as  Dr.  Montessori's 
are  terribly  hampered  by  the  difficulty  of 
finding  people  in  any  quantity  capable  of 
carrying  out  ideas  which  require  careful 
observation  and  a  real  knowledge  of  the 
child's  mind  and  body.  They  may  earnestly 
strive,  but  they  will  fail,  and  consequently 
many  good  methods    brought    forward   by 

48 


TEACHEES 

clever  trained  people  go  to  the  wall  and  are 
labelled  as  useless,  simply  because  the 
teachers  are  quite  incompetent  to  either 
grasp  or  carry  out  any  method  which  re- 
quires a  real  and  not  a  superficial  know- 
ledge of  Pedagogy. 

Now  this  is  all  rather  dreadful,  and  the 
only  way  to  improve  matters  and  give 
children  a  chance  of  starting  life  with  a 
healthy  and  pure  outlook  is  for  all  parents 
to  band  themselves  together  and  insist  that 
the  people  who  volunteer  to  take  charge  of 
and  educate  children,  shall  have  received  a 
proper  training  both  mentally  and  physically. 
If  this  was  done,  in  one  generation,  educa- 
tion in  the  highest  sense  of  the  word  would 
have  a  bright  outlook,  as  people  who  have 
received  a  sane  and  clean  education  them- 
selves will  most  certainly  see  that  their 
children  receive  and  benefit  by  the  same. 
I  do  not  think  that  parents  can  often  give 
much  thought  as  to  the  unlimited  amount 
of  harm  done  in  their  nurseries.  The  con- 
versations that  are  carried  on  before  young 

49  e 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

children,  between  nurse  and  nursery-maids, 
are  five  times  out  of  six  harmful,  I  am 
certain ;  and  any  observing  mother  can 
tell,  from  the  way  children  behave  and  the 
things  they  talk  about,  the  sort  of  influence 
that  is  unconsciously  wielded  by  the  nurses 
in  charge.  Looking  back  at  my  nursery 
days,  and  my  memory  of  them  is  very 
distinct,  I  can  easily  remember  the  kind  of 
topics  that  were  discussed  before  me :  every 
sort  of  gossip  on  the  latest  scandals,  the 
latest  murder,  horrors  of  war,  &c,  all  in  their 
most  gruesome  details.  I  was,  I  suppose, 
about  four  or  five  years  of  age,  and  those 
conversations  are  clear  in  my  memory  to 
this  day.  My  nurse  was  the  dearest  and 
most  faithful  of  old  Scotch  servants,  and 
would  have  given  her  life  gladly  for  any  of 
her  charges,  but  she  had  never  been  taught 
herself  as  to  what  was  harmful  and  what 
was  not  for  children  to  see  and  hear,  and 
had  the  uneducated  person's  general  idea 
that  children  up  to  the  age  of  about  ten 
years  are  deaf,  dumb,  and  blind.     Many  and 

50 


TEACHERS 

many  an  evil  growth  and  crooked  outlook 
on  life  is  gained  in  those  early  nursery  days, 
and  they  cling  steadily  through  life.  In 
these  days  of  heavy  doings  and  light  think- 
ings, the  children  of  the  well-to-do  are  more 
and  more  left  in  the  charge  of  others  than 
their  parents,  and  it  seems  that  this  would 
become  more  so  than  less  in  the  future.  So, 
surely,  a  giant  effort  should  be  made  towards 
establishing  a  training  college,  or  improving 
the  ones  at  present  in  existence,  and  insist- 
ing that  nurses  and  teachers  are  trained  so 
as  to  have  considerably  higher  ideals  than 
they  have  at  present,  and  a  far  deeper  know- 
ledge of  the  mind  and  body,  before  they  are 
allowed  to  play  havoc  with  the  lives  of  the 
young. 

Most  certainly  there  are  many  young 
people  who  love  children,  and  have  them- 
selves been  brought  up  in  a  clean,  though 
perhaps  limited  manner :  opportunities 
should  be  given  to  them  to  train  so  as  to 
become  able  to  take  charge  of  children  and 
to  fully  understand  the  tremendous  respon- 

51 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

sibilities  they  undertake  when  children  are 
given  into  their  charge. 

A  man  would  be  considered  a  great  fool 
if  he  placed  a  valuable  racehorse  in  the 
hands  of  an  ordinary  stable-man  to  be 
trained  for  a  great  race,  and  the  horse 
would  stand  little  chance  to  win  unless 
handled  by  an  experienced  trainer  who  had 
made  it  his  business  for  years  to  learn  all 
there  was  to  know  on  the  subject  of 
handling  valuable  animals.  He  would  give 
hours  of  observation  and  thought,  he  would 
know  to  a  hair's  weight  what  the  animal 
could  stand  physically,  any  mental  idiosyn- 
crasies would  be  studied  and  sought  to  be 
overcome.  But  the  average  person  who  has 
charge  of  children  as  a  rule  not  only  does 
not  know  even  the  anatomy  of  the  child,  but 
the  formation  of  its  mind  and  the  proper 
way  of  training  that  mind,  and  bringing  it 
to  a  full  and  perfect  development,  is  often 
not  even  considered  a  matter  of  importance. 
I  do  not  wish  to  imply  that  these  people  are 
purposely  negligent  of  their  duties,  I  merely 

52 


TEACHERS 

wish  to  point  out  that  the  large  majority 
do  not  realise  or  understand,  from  their 
imperfect  training,  either  duties  or  respon- 
sibilities, the  idea  being  very  often  that 
children  will  turn  out  good  or  bad  men  or 
women  quite  independently  of  their  upbring- 
ing and  the  influence  brought  to  bear  on 
them  during  the  early  years  of  their  de- 
velopment. 


53 


DANCING 

FOK  many  years  I  have  been  a  most 
ardent  admirer  of  Miss  Isadora 
Duncan,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  in  the 
revival  of  classical  barefooted  dancing  she 
stands  out  with  great  brilliancy.  All  praise 
is  due  to  her  as  a  creator  of  this  school  of 
dancing,  and  those  amongst  us  who  seek  to 
follow  in  her  footsteps  do  so,  I  fear,  but 
feebly.  I  think  I  am  right  in  saying  that  all 
the  sincere  classical  dancers  wish  to  forward 
this  school,  not  merely  from  the  point  of 
view  of  making  money  on  the  stage,  but 
from  the  educational  value  they  feel  it  ought 
to  hold  in  the  upbringing  of  all  children  of 
both  sexes.  And  that  this  value  is  very 
great  has  been  proved  as  much  as  such  a 

55 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

young  movement  can  be  proved  by  Miss 
Duncan,  M.  Jacque  Dalcroze,  and  others. 
Though,  of  course,  the  eurhythmies  of 
Jacque  Dalcroze  is  a  system  of  training 
entirely  different  in  method  from  that  of 
any  one  else. 

One  of  the  greatest  advantages  that 
classical  dancing  holds  over  the  toe-dancing 
school  is  that  it  is  possible  to  become  pro- 
ficient in  it  by  giving  a  short  time  daily  to 
its  practice,  instead  of  the  many  hours  and 
years  of  arduous  work  that  a  toe-dancer  has 
to  go  through  before  becoming  a  finished 
exponent  of  the  art.  One  is  an  accomplish- 
ment that  we  all  ought  to  be  able  to  enjoy, 
the  other  is  only  possible  for  the  Avoman  who 
means  to  make  it  a  profession,  and  give  the 
best  years  of  her  life  to  it.  Though  to 
become  a  good  classical  dancer  it  is  not  only 
necessary  to  take  a  child  and  instruct  it  in 
the  art  of  moving  gracefully  if  the  rest  of  its 
education  does  not  assist  in  the  teaching. 
From  earliest  infancy  it  must  be  taught  to 
observe,  to  concentrate,  to  realise  tbe  beau- 

56 


MISS   ISADORA  DUNCAN 
From  a  Photograph  by  the  Dover  Street  Studios 


DANCING 

beautiful  in  line  and  colour,  and  to  have 
the  ugly  and  repulsive  kept  away  from  it, 
encouraged  to  copy  beautiful  poses  and 
eventually  express  to  music  in  movement 
what  that  music  says  to  it.  The  educational 
value  of  classical  dancing  is  that  its  expres- 
sion has  to  come  from  within.  A  toe-dancer 
is  very  often  merely  a  brilliant  machine. 
Her  dance  is  often  composed  for  her  by  her 
professors,  and  her  well-trained  muscles 
merely  respond  like  a  perfect  machine  to 
their  commands.  It  therefore  follows  that 
the  educational  value  in  such  dances  is 
practically  nil,  apart  from  the  dancers  having 
had  to  learn  muscle  -  control,  patience, 
and  endurance,  which  of  course  is  of  use. 
A  child  trained  to  classical  dancing  in  the 
right  way  will,  by  the  time  it  reaches  full 
growth,  dance,  I  feel  sure,  as  we  were  all 
meant  to  dance,  every  muscle  in  control  and 
the  mind  enveloped  in  the  glory  of  expressing 
beauty  by  perfect  rhythmical  movements. 
Having  worked  on  the  stage  as  a  classical 
dancer  for  a  short  time  I  was  a  good  deal 

57 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AXD  GAMES 

saddened  by  the  adverse  criticisms  I  heard 
on  all  sides,  about  the  bare-footed  school  of 
dancing :  general  sameness  and  general 
dullness  were  the  two  most  severe.  My  own 
dancing  being  criticised  I  did  not  mind.  I 
was  merely  a  beginner,  and  beginners  nearly 
always  have  to  suffer.  I  asked  many  and 
various  people  as  to  the  reasons  of  these 
criticisms  and  always  got  the  same  answer : 
•  Very  pretty,  yes.  but  when  it  is  seen  once. 
that  is  sufficient.  Interesting.  I  dare  say.  to 
painters  and  sculptors  who  know  when  a 
pose  is  pure  and  a  faithful  copy  of  the 
antique,  but  the  general  public  don't,  and 
all  the  poses  and  dances  look  much  alike.* 

At  that  time  I  used  to  get  angry,  and 
salved  my  wounded  feelings  by  putting  these 
people  down  as  narrow-minded  and  inartistic, 
but  at  the  bottom  of  my  heart  I  felt  that 
they  had  some  right  on  their  side.  I  went 
several  times  to  see  classical  dancing  which 
was  supposed  to  be  good,  and  tried  fairly 
with  an  open  mind  to  criticise  it.  After  a 
good  deal  of  sincere  study  and  thought  on 

58 


MADl.e   ADELINE    GENEE 
From  a  Photograph  by  the  Dd'er  Street  Studios 


DANCING 

the  subject  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  to 
a  great  extent  these  criticisms  were  right. 
What  was  lacking  I  was  sure  was  the 
absence  of  any  real  joyousness  and  life  in 
the  dancing.  The  dancers  did  their  best, 
but  with  the  exception  of  Miss  Duncan's 
work,  which  carries  a  splendid  joyousness 
in  it,  the  dancing  was  curiously  dead  and 
heavy.  The  poses  were  good,  the  arms  and 
body  graceful  and  trained,  but  the  legs  and 
feet  of  most  of  them  were  totally  untrained, 
the  muscles  soft  and  flabby,  thus  causing 
every  movement  to  be  devoid  of  life.  In 
fact,  an  exact  antithesis  to  the  toe-dancer, 
who  very  often  has  wonderfully  trained  legs 
and  a  great  rigidity  of  arms  and  body.  The 
Russian  dancers  have  to  a  great  extent  got 
away  from  this  very  ugly  style. 

Many  contend  that  the  ancient  Greek 
dancers,  whom  the  present-day  classical 
dancers  try  to  copy,  did  not  train  their  legs 
for  dancing,  but  merely  used  them  as 
supports  for  the  body  and  arms,  to  which  all 
the     graceful    movements    were     confined. 

59 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

Personally,  I  feel  sure  that  the  Greeks  if 
they  trained  their  bodies  and  arms  for  the 
dance  did  not  neglect  the  legs  and  feet,  as 
they  were  known  to  insist  most  strongly  in 
their  physical  education  on  perfect  muscular 
development  throughout  the  body. 

Then  came  to  me  the  problem  which  I 
have  attempted  to  solve  during  the  last 
three  years.  Is  it  possible  to  combine 
Greek  poses,  graceful  body  movements,  and 
plastic  light  movements  of  the  legs,  so  that 
the  whole  may  be  welded  and  work  smoothly 
together.  In  fact,  to  try  and  resemble  the 
Russian  dancers  in  their  lightness  and 
charm,  but  avoiding  the  tortuous  and  un- 
natural movements  and  positions  favoured 
by  the  toe-dancer.  I  felt  sure  that  a  great 
deal  of  the  lightness  of  the  toe-dancer's 
work  could  be  brought  with  great  advantage 
into  the  classical  dancer's,  and  still  lose  none 
of  the  simplicity  and  purity  which  is  the 
barefooted  dancer's  ideal,  rather  in  fact  add 
to  it,  as  it  is  quite  unnatural  to  have  heavy, 
uncontrolled  muscles.    This  can  be  proved  by 

60 


MADAME   KARSAVINA 
From  a  Photograph  by  the  Do','er  Street  Studios 


DANCING 

watching  the  dancing  of  savages,  whose 
movements  may  be  grotesque,  but  every 
muscle  is  under  control,  and  each  movement 
sure.  The  answer  to  all  this  by  many  would 
be  that  it  is  only  necessary  to  remove  the 
tights,  shoes,  and  ballet- skirt  from  any  of 
the  leading  toe-dancers,  replace  them  by  a 
Greek  drapery,  and  you  will  have  a  perfect 
classical  dancer :  for  many  of  the  Russians 
have  shown  that  they  have  studied  a  certain 
amount  of  this  work  as  far  as  poses  go  in 
some  of  their  ballets — '  Narcissus,'  for 
instance.  But  there  are  several  insuperable 
objections  to  this,  one  of  the  foremost  being 
that  an  experienced  toe-dancer's  bare  foot  is 
nearly  always  a  thing  of  horror  to  look  at. 
Secondly,  a  toe-dancer  gets  all  her  positions 
with  her  foot  pointed  as  stiffly  as  possible, 
and  her  foot  when  not  on  the  ground  is 
never  otherwise  than  pointed.  A  bare  foot 
pointed,  even  a  well-shaped  bare  foot,  is  an 
extremely  ugly  thing.  A  toe-dancer's  foot 
has  at  all  times  to  be  rigid.  She  gets  her 
muscular  control  from  the  rigid  foot  upwards, 

61 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

and  it  would  be  an  unheard-of  fault  for  a  toe- 
dancer  to  allow  her  foot  to  become  limp  at 
any  moment  while  dancing.  Again,  a 
classical  dancer  must  have  her  bare  feet  limp 
exactly  like  her  hands :  the  greatest  difficulty 
I  found  was  to  keep  the  feet  limp  and  get 
the  muscular  control  in  the  legs,  also  not  to 
let  the  feet  look  dead.  All  dancers  have  to 
conquer  this  difficulty  in  their  hands  when 
learning  to  dance.  A  limp  hand  and  a  dead- 
looking  hand  are  two  very  different  things. 
I  have  worked  hard  for  three  years  at  what 
I  think  I  am  justified  in  calling  a  new  form 
of  bare-foot  dancing.  I  make  no  pretence 
of  having  perfected  it,  but  I  hope  it  is  a  step 
in  the  right  direction  towards  dancing  that 
shall  be  perfect  in  pose  and  expression,  and 
that  will  help  the  human  mind  and  body  to 
retain  its  birthright  of  beauty. 


62 


BAREFOOTED    DANCING   AFTER   THE   GREEK  STYLE 
From  a  Photograph  by  the   White  Studios 


BAREFOOTED    DANCING   AFTER   THE   GREEK  STYLE 
From  a  Photograph  by  the   White  Studios 


SWIMMING 

IF  asked  which  style  of  physical  exercise  I 
should  recommend  to  bring  nearly  all 
the  greater  muscles  of  the  body  into  play, 
and  be  of  all-round  value  to  the  exerciser, 
I  should  unhesitatingly  say  swimming — 
and  it  is  with  a  good  deal  of  pleasure 
one  notices  how  greatly  on  the  increase  the 
learning  of  swimming  is  amongst  well-to-do 
people,  and  that  parents  are  beginning  dimly 
to  realise  what  an  incalculable  amount  of 
good  children  of  both  sexes  gather  from  this 
exercise.  Having  seriously  studied  swim- 
ming and  diving  since  I  was  fourteen  years 
old,  I  feel  that  I  am  at  liberty  to  speak 
strongly  on  the  subject ;  of  the  good  that 
can  be  got  from  indulging   in   one   of    the 

63 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

most  pleasurable  physical  exercises  there 
are,  and  also  the  harm  that  can  result  from 
bad  teaching,  &c. 

Having  been  a  member  of  the  Bath  Club, 
London,  since  it  first  opened,  I  have  had 
every  opportunity  of  studying  swimming  and 
the  people  who  swim — and  there  is  no  doubt 
that  the  Club  has  done  an  enormous  lot  to 
encourage  learning  swimming  amongst  the 
rich  and  their  children,  particularly  the 
latter,  averaging  in  age  from  three  years  old 
and  upwards ;  also,  of  course,  I  have  swum 
and  watched  swimming  in  many  other 
countries  and  baths.  An  interesting  thing 
is  that  most  of  the  men  anyway  who  swim 
seriously,  going  in  for  competitions,  exhi- 
bitions, &c,  are  gleaned  from  the  working 
classes,  not  from  the  idle  rich,  who  one 
would  imagine  have  far  more  time  and 
opportunity  to  perfect  themselves.  But  the 
art  of  swimming  and  diving  is  curiously  little 
excelled  in  by  the  latter.  They  of  course 
know  how  to  swim,  as  that  is  taught  at  most 
public  schools — but  few  get  any  further,  the 

64 


ENGLISH    POSITION    IN   AIR   WHILE    DIVING 


SWIMMING 

real  swimming  Avorld  being  composed  nearly 
entirely  of  hard-working  men.  This,  of 
course,  refers  to  England.  When  1  first 
began  swimming  it  Avas  thought  quite  out  of 
the  common  to  take  an  interest  in  this 
exercise,  and  women  who  swam,  amongst 
one's  friends,  could  be  counted  on  the  fingers 
of  one's  hand.  As  to  high  diving,  that  was 
looked  at  in  horror  and  amazement. 

Then  the  Swedish  divers  came  to  London 
and  gave  exhibitions  of  high  diving;  and 
people  began  to  realise  that  there  might  be 
something  worth  while  in  this  art  beyond 
the  ordinary  flopping-along  breast-stroke 
through  the  water,  which  was  about  as 
much  as  the  average  woman,  anyhow,  dared 
to  try.  Swimming  clubs  for  both  sexes 
began  to  crop  up,  competitions  were  started, 
prizes  given — and  the  standard  rose  by 
degrees  to  what  it  is  now.  Not  high  enough, 
by  any  means,  but  an  erormous  improve- 
ment on  fifteen  years  ago.  I  personally 
think  that  what  makes  the  Swedish  divers 
stand  out  as  a  rule  head  and  shoulders  above 

65  F 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND    GAMES 

any  other  divers  is  their  marvellous  realisa- 
tion of  form  in  their  work,  and  to  define 
what  one  means  by  form  is  almost  im- 
possible. Some  will  say  a  diver  with  a 
great  deal  of  finish  has  good  form,  personally 
T  think  it  quite  possible  to  be  an  absolutely 
finished  diver  and  yet  lack  a  great  deal  in 
form.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  great  dash 
and  boldness  and  muscular  control  the 
Swedes  exhibit  in  the  air  has  a  great  deal  to 
do  with  it.  One  of  the  above  qualities  is  often 
seen,  but  all  three  together  seems  almost 
unique  to  the  Swedish  divers. 

Perhaps  it  may  be  interesting  to  mention 
the  difference  between  a  plain  English  dive 
and  a  plain  Swedish  dive.  As  regards  the 
positions — the  English  dive  is  taken  with 
the  hands  pointed  straight  up  above  the 
head,  from  the  tips  of  the  fingers  to  the  end 
of  the  toes  the  body  ought  to  be  in  a 
straight  line.  The  Swedish  plain  dive  is 
the  swallow  dive,  so  called  from  the  position 
of  the  hands  and  arms  out  from  the  shoulders 
at  almost  right  angles.      During  the  flight 

66 


SWEDISH   SWALLOW   DIVE 


SWIMMING 

through  the  air  the  back  is  hollowed  as 
much  as  possible.  A  man  doing  a  high 
running  swallow  dive  greatly  resembles  a 
bird  swooping  down,  and  the  beauty  of  line 
that  the  best  divers  manage  to  get  into  it 
is  remarkable. 

Of  course  the  muscular  development  and 
control  needed  in  high  diving  is  very  great— 
therefore  making  it  a  most  valuable  exercise. 
A  really  good  high  dive  and  perfectly 
developed  and  controlled  muscles  are  bound 
to  go  together. 

I  think  that  the  beauty  in  the  art  of 
diving  is  greatly  under-valued,  and  grace- 
fulness not  nearly  enough  insisted  on  in  the 
teaching  of  it ;  like  all  other  physical  exer- 
cises unless  fitness  and  beauty  of  the  body 
are  the  aim  of  the  exerciser,  they  ought  to 
be  left  alone,  little  good  will  certainly  be 
gathered  from  any  form  of  exercise  if  it  is 
entered  into  merely  in  the  spirit  of  com- 
petition, and  not  with  the  wish  to  improve 
the  body  and  the  mind.  Most  exercises  of  a 
vigorous  kind   will  help  a  person  mentally ; 

67 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

for  instance,  the  mind  would  have  to  be  a 
seething  mass  of  corruption  if  it  was  past 
being  helped  by  the  contact  and  feel  of  cold 
water  after  a  rush  through  the  air  from  a 
height ;  unclean  and  impure  thoughts  that 
crowd  gaily  and  with  little  shame  under  the 
electric  lights  in  a  crowded  restaurant 
would  not  venture  to  show  themselves 
when  the  body  is  tingling  and  the  mind 
rioting  with  joy  from  a  swift  rush  through 
the  sunlit  air  into  a  still  pool  in  a  river, 
or  even  into  the  green  depths  of  a 
swimming-bath.  No  ;  exercise  aided  by  cold 
clean  water  and  fresh  air  do  not  walk  hand 
in  hand  with  uncleanliness  of  spirit,  and  if 
only  this  was  more  understood  and  realised 
by  parents,  how  much  unhappiness  and  peril 
might  be  saved  their  children.  As  to  the 
teaching  of  children — swimming  ought  to  be 
taught  to  all  and  taught  in  the  right  spirit — 
not  regarded  as  a  means  to  clutch  a  gold 
medal  from  some  less  fortunate  brother  or 
sister,  but  a  glorious  means  of  helping  them- 
selves   mentally    and    physically,    and     an 

68 


SWIMMING 

exercise  that  ought  to  be  put  within  the 
reach  of  rich  and  poor;  and,  I  feel  most 
strongly,  taught,  as  all  physical  exercises 
should  be  taught,  to  man  and  woman,  as  a 
weapon  to  combat  through  life  temptations 
and  sorrows  which  come  to  all  on  life's 
journey.  It  is  only  necessary  to  watch  small 
children  splash  about  in  pool  or  bath  to 
understand  what  great  joy  can  be  given 
them  and  in  a  very  easy  manner.  Taught 
and  helped  they  make  marvellous  progress 
and  even  the  quite  small  ones  will  strive  to 
perfect  themselves  in  stroke  or  dive — also 
love  of  the  water  seems  to  breed  good 
temper  and  good  fellowship,  therefore  surely 
that  love  is  to  be  encouraged.  As  to  the 
harm  that  can  be  got  from  swimming  I 
think  it  is  the  same  that  can  be  found  in  any 
exercise  that  is  practised  in  a  harmful 
manner.  Overstrain  is  particularly  liable  in 
children  who  are  allowed  and  encouraged  to 
race  each  other  until  their  hearts  are 
bumping,  which  also  leads  to  bad  swimming. 
I   am   sure  no  serious  racing  ought  to  be 

69 


DANCING,   BEAUTY,   AND    GAMES 

allowed  to  the  young  until  the  strokes  are 
sure  and  perfect. 

Again,  children,  in  baths  especially,  are 
allowed  to  stay  in  far  too  long.  No  time  limit 
can  be  given,  I  know,  as  one  child  can  stay 
in  the  water  a  great  deal  longer  than  another, 
but  constantly  one  sees  children  blue  with 
cold  and  exhaustion,  and  when  they  are 
taken  out  of  the  water  only  too  often  parents 
and  teachers  hurry  them  oft'  to  stand  under 
a  hot  shower-bath  or,  a  still  worse  evil,  take 
them  into  the  the  hot  room  of  a  Turkish 
bath  to  get  warmed  up,  consequently  an 
overtired,  flushed  child  is  the  result,  instead 
of  a  happy,  brisk,  and  refreshed  one.  Less 
time  in  the  water,  and,  if  cold,  a  few  exercises 
or  a  romp  to  warm  up  after,  will  be  far  more 
successful  and  also  stop  the  plaint  which  is 
often  dinned  into  our  ears — '  Such  a  pity 
my  child  can't  learn  to  swim,  but  she  or  he 
always  catches  cold  afterwards.' 

Small  children  can  learn,  apart  from  the 
ordinary  breast  and  side  strokes,  all  the  so- 
called  fancy  work   in   the   water,   of  which 

70 


SWIMMING 

there  are  many  different  varieties — all  of 
them  being  a-  great  aid  to  gracefulness  and 
sureness,  and  delighting  children  as  well 
as  grown-up  people.  Personally  I  am  no 
believer  in  high  diving  for  young  children, 
as  the  muscles  are  seldom  either  strong  or 
controlled  enough  to  make  a  fair  certainty 
of  the  dive  being  a  good  one,  and  if  it  isn't 
I  do  not  think  it  is  good  for  a  small  child  to 
hit  the  water  in  the  wrong  position. 

They  certainly  ought  to  learn  to  dive  and 
to  dive  well,  but  not  from  more  than  a  ten- 
feet  board  -until  they  can  really  make  a 
certainty  of  a  good  clean  dive  from  that 
height.  I  mention  this  as  often  one  sees 
ambitious  parents  urging  on  their  children 
to  dive  from  a  thirteen  or  fourteen  feet 
board,  when  they  cannot  properly  dive  from 
three  feet.  Of  course  a  good  teacher  will 
not  permit  this,  but  good  teachers  are  few. 
Grown-up  people  also  often  make  the  same 
mistake,  and  go  falling  off  high  boards  long 
before  they  can  dive  from  a  low  one.  Also 
in   the   minds    of    non- swimmers   or   divers 

71 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

there  seems  to  exist  the  curious  belief  that 
high  diving  is  a  gift.  I  have  often  been  met 
with  reproachful  looks  after  a  dive,  and  the 
words,  '  I  really  don't  know  how  you  do  it, 
it  is  quite  wonderful;  and  you  know  I  have 
tried  and  I  can't  spring  a  bit  like  you  can ; 
isn't  it  a  shame ! '  When  answered  some- 
what prosaically  that  it  has  taken  fourteen 
years  of  hard  practice  to  acquire  that  spring, 
and  that  it  is  necessary  to  have  the  muscles 
developed  in  the  legs  and  body  before  it  is 
possible  to  dive  at  all  with  any  skill,  watch 
the  non- swimmer's  mouth  and  you  will  see 
the  one  word  '  liar '  forming  silently  thereon  ! 
These  are  a  type  who  appear  in  swimming- 
baths  and  stand  about  on  the  edge  rarely 
venturing  into  the  water,  and,  when  they  do, 
struggle  about  in  a  half-drowned  condition, 
believing  that  to  show  any  muscle  or  know- 
ledge of  swimming  is  to  be  thoroughly  un- 
graceful— if  not  hopelessly  vulgar.  They 
also  have  another  trying  habit,  and  that  is 
of  paddling  feebly  round  in  circles  always 
just  on  the  spot  where  the  divers  from  the 

72 


SWIMMING 

high  boards  must  enter  the  water.  When 
the  frantic  instructor  tries  to  explain  the 
situation,  they  stare  wildly  round  the  edge, 
but  nothing  will  ever  induce  them  to  look 
up  to  where  the  danger  comes  from.  More 
than  once  I  have  become  weak  from 
laughter,  standing  on  a  high  board  watch- 
ing the  instructor  and  paddler — also  when 
eventually  the  whole  bath  starts  shouting  at 
them  and  they  are  removed,  it  is  a  certainty 
that  in  a  sort  of  hypnotised  condition  they 
will  be  back  in  the  same  spot  shortly. 

There  is  also  another  type  very  prevalent 
at  swimming-baths,  as  I  know  for  my  sins, 
and  these  are  women  who  come  and  stand 
about  on  the  edge  of  the  baths,  for  what 
reason  I  never  could  discover,  unless  it  is  to 
talk,  but  it  seems  a  damp  and  uncomfortable 
spot  for  indulging  in  conversation.  They 
always  stand  with  their  backs  to  the  water, 
and  seem  to  be  absolutely  unconscious  of 
both  bath  and  swimmers.  It  does  not  the 
least  matter  that  there  may  be  the  most 
convenient  balcony  with  comfortable  chairs 

73 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

provided  for  those  who  wish  to  watch  the 
swimming,  not  at  all — nothing  short  of 
violence  will  move  them,  and  if  there  is  a 
low  diving-board  handy,  they  always  stand 
on  it.  Polite  remarks  such  as,  '  I  wish  to 
dive,  please,'  or  '  Please  I  want  the  board,' 
uttered  in  a  beseeching  fashion,  has  no 
effect  whatever.  For  years  I  treated  these 
people  with  politeness,  but  eventually  my 
temper  broke,  with  excellent  results,  and  I 
have  now  adopted  a  way  which  is  instan- 
taneously effective,  and  I  offer  the  suggestion 
with  great  pleasure  to  any  of  my  fellow- 
swimmers  who  have  suffered  in  the  same 
manner.  Here  it  is — brush  past  them 
heavily  once  or  twice  so  that  they  get 
thoroughly  wet,  if  that  is  not  effective  run 
lightly  up  behind  and  shout  '  Board  ! '  with 
all  the  strength  your  lungs  are  capable  of, 
that  will  generally  cause  them  to  jump 
several  feet  into  the  air,  and  while  their 
nerves  are  still  trembling  place  them  in  the 
hands  of  an  attendant  to  conduct  to  the 
aforesaid  balcony ! 

74 


SWIMMING 

It  is  extraordinary  bow  keen  people  get 
about  swimming  even  when  they  have  taken 
it  up  quite  late  in  life — I  know  several  who 
swim  regularly,  and  work  away  at  diving 
with  the  greatest  diligence,  and  it  is  much  to 
their  credit,  as  learning  diving  after  you  are 
full  grown  is  a  most  painful  exercise,  and  if 
you  are  well  on  in  years  and  heavy  I  should 
have  thought  doubly  so— and  one  would 
have  imagined  not  a  very  healthy  exercise, 
but  I  know  one  or  two  women  who  are  well 
past  middle  age  who  have  only  the  last  year 
or  two  taken  up  swimming  and  diving,  and 
they  seem  to  benefit  greatly  by  it.  I  think 
it  a  very  great  question  as  to  whether  giving 
swimming-baths  to  the  very  poor  is  an  advan- 
tage or  not — I  do  not  mean  for  a  moment 
that  they  ought  not  to  have  swimming-baths 
and  also  learn  to  swim,  but  done  as  things 
are  at  present  with  insufficient  instruction, 
and  water  that  is  changed  only  once  or  twice 
a  week,  the  risk  of  infection  is  great.  If 
people  who  do  not  wash  regularly  use 
swimming-baths,  and  a  bath  with   soap    is 

75 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

not  made  compulsory  before  entering  the 
public  water,  then  running  water  through 
the  bath  ought  to  be  the  alternative. 

Let  me  once  more  urge  parents  to  have 
their  children  taught  to  swim,  in  the  proper 
fashion,  and  with  the  proper  ideas  as  to  its 
value  and  place  in  life,  for  there  is  no  better 
sport  or  exercise  than  swimming  and  diving 
to  instil  in  a  child's  mind  purity  and  self- 
control,  and  drive  away  that  present-day 
great  usurper  of  the  mind,  uncleanliness  of 
thought,  the  beginnings  of  which,  alas !  can 
sometimes  nowadays  be  seen  in  even  the 
quite  young. 


76 


BIG    GAME    SHOOTING 

NOWADAYS  it  is  the  fashion  for  the 
wealthy  young  man  about  town  to  go 
to  India  or  Africa  to  hunt  big  game.  So  it 
may  be  of  interest  to  discuss  a  little  this  big 
game  shooting  from  an  educational  point 
of  view — which  point  of  view  had  not 
arisen,  and  of  which  there  Avas  no  need, 
before  or  during  the  last  generation.  But, 
alas !  different  times  and  different  men  have 
turned  hunting  into  a  mere  pastime  of  the 
lowest  kind — into  an  excuse  for  killing  in  an 
unsportsmanlike  fashion,  to  be  used  as  a  sop 
for  a  feeble,  decadent  vanity. 

Such  mighty  hunters  as  Mr.  Selous  and 
the  late  Captain  Gordon  Gumming  made  it 
possible  only  to  honour  and  respect  in  every 
way  such  men,  who  hunted  in  a  clean,  hard, 

77 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

fearless  manner,  spending  their  lives  and 
caring  little  of  the  way  they  risked  them,  so 
long  as  the  task  set  was  accomplished. 
There  was  no  necessity  then  to  question  as 
to  the  sportsmanlike  manner  in  which  big 
game  was  hunted.  It  is  more  than  a  pity 
that  the  same  cannot  be  said  at  the  present 
day. 

In  imagination  one  sees  the  many  mighty 
hunters  of  bygone  days :  the  men  who 
laboured  and  sweated  in  Africa  during  the 
time  when  elephant  ivory  was  a  paying 
game.  The  years  of  hardship,  of  carrying 
one's  life  in  one's  hand — the  only  thing 
that  kept  death  away,  an  antiquated  rifle 
that  took  a  minute  to  load  —  these  were 
men  to  whose  memory  all  real  sportsmen 
must  doff  their  hats  and  bend  their  heads 
in  reverence. 

One  or  two  are  still  left  to  us,  and 
written  on  their  faces  is  the  story  of  the 
lives  .they  have  led— a  story  clean  and  fine 
to  read — eyes  that  look  out  with  no  shiftless 
look,  bright   and   clear   as   steel;    firm   lips 

78 


BIG   GAME    SHOOTING 

that  have  suffered,  perhaps,  but  have  never 
trembled  from  fear;  lines  drawn  plentifully 
by  the  sun-god,  but  each  line  shaped  by  a 
wholesome  thought.  No  sagging  lines  of 
self-indulgence  in  these  faces ;  even  if  they 
had  their  merry  roystering  times  on  their 
few  returns  to  civilisation,  they  wiped  out 
the  marks  by  the  months  of  arduous  and 
self-denying  living  which  they  spent  hunt- 
ing. Some  to  make  money,  others  because 
they  had  been  born  hunters  and  would  con- 
tinue to  hunt  until  the  Most  Mighty  of  all 
Hunters  stretched  forth  His  hand  and 
claimed  them  in  their  turn. 

Sportsmen  these  in  the  greatest  sense  of 
the  word.  Turn  in  your  graves,  ye  who  have 
passed  on !  Or,  rather,  let  us  pray  that  it  is 
denied  to  you  to  see  the  men  and  methods 
that  follow  so  feebly  in  your  footsteps. 

Let  me  try  and  compare  the  going  forth 
to  hunt  of  a  rich  young  man  of  the  present 
day,  and  one  of  these  old  hunters.  The 
rich  young  man  starts,  say,  from  Mombasa — 
it  is  the  pet  place  of  rich  young  men,  as  it  is 

79 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

easily  got  at,  and  a  non-feverish  hunting- 
ground  can  be  reached  with  little  trouble. 
He,  the  rich  young  man,  is  quite  often 
accompanied  by  a  professional  white  hunter, 
Avho  takes  all  trouble  from  off  his  shoulders, 
engages  his  men,  runs  the  whole  outfit  for 
him,  and  generally  acts  as  male  nurse  to  the 
rich  young  man,  seeing  that  he  does  not  run 
his  valuable  head  anywhere  in  the  direction 
that  danger  might  lurk.  He  is,  as  a  rule,  a 
first-class  shot,  so  if  his  charge  misses  or 
maims  a  dangerous  animal,  he  can  always 
rectify  matters.  In  fact,  he  sets  the  scene, 
writes  the  play,  acts  as  audience,  and  the 
rich  young  man  plays  the  chief  part,  and  the 
whole  thing  as  much  resembles  real  big 
game  hunting  as  the  theatre  resembles  real 
life. 

Of  course  the  running  of  the  caravan  is 
is  in  itself  no  light  work,  as  the  rich  young 
man  would  find  it  terribly  uncomfortable  to 
travel  with  less  than  sixty  or  ninety  men, 
there  are  so  many  things  to  carry,  tents, 
chairs  of  different  kinds  to  rest  the  aching 

80 


BIG   GAME    SHOOTING 

back,  tables,  dozens  of  plates,  spoons,  forks, 
and  knives,  beds,  a  mosquito-room  to  dine 
in,  champagne  to  restore  the  rich  young 
man  after  his  fatiguing  day,  two  or  three 
portmanteaus  of  clothes — he  might  get  fever 
if  he  did  not  change  constantly,  and  to  sit 
about  in  sweaty  clothes  is  very  dangerous 
he  has  heard — and  then,  my  God !  he  might 
die,  if  he  hasn't  brought  a  doctor  with 
him  this  time :  he  most  certainly  will  if  he 
ventures  back  into  Africa  again. 

The  above  may  seem  exaggerated,  but 
I  can  most  sincerely  assure  my  readers  that 
it  is  not.  It  is  merely  the  modern  young 
man's  idea  of  sport. 

Bah !  let  me  take  a  deep,  clean  breath, 
and  get  back  to  talking  about  the  real  men, 
the  hunters  of  old  whom  we  can  respect  and 
look  up  to,  and  feel  glad  that  sometimes 
they  will  let  us  sit  at  their  feet,  and  learn 
from  them  a  little  of  the  wisdom  they  have 
massed  together  during  years  of  solitary 
travel.  They  are  always  quite  modest  men, 
putting   little   value   on   their   brave   deeds, 

81  Cr 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

regarding  it  all  in  the  day's  work — though 
sometimes  their  eyes  will  sparkle  as  they  tell 
of  some  great  adventure  in  bygone  days. 
For  it  is  near  to  their  hearts,  this  life  of 
wandering,  and  they  would  lead  no  other. 
To  do  an  unfair  or  cowardly  act  would  be  an 
impossibility  to  these  men,  they  are  just  good 
sportsmen,  and  they  want  no  fairer  name. 
How  different  their  hunting  !  One  or  two 
men  would  carry  all  they  needed  for  months 
of  travel ;  no  stock  of  tinned  food  here,  they 
ate  what  they  killed,  and  if  they  killed 
nothing,  went  without.  A  little  flour  and 
rice,  a  knife,  a  spoon,  perhaps  a  fork  ! — it  was 
not  a  necessity,  so  why  take  it?  A  small 
tent,  a  few  odds-and-ends,  a  couple  of  shirts. 
Everything  worked  down  to  the  lowest  limit. 
Not  how  much  can  we  take — the  new  gospel 
— but  how  much  can  we  do  without,  and 
they  did  without  most  things.  They  were 
there  to  hunt  to  the  best  of  their  ability,  not 
to  coddle  their  bodies ;  they  would  have  been 
ashamed  to  do  that  at  any  time,  as  coddled 
bodies  and  clean  souls  do  not  as  a  rule  go 

82 


BIG   GAME    SHOOTING 

together,   and   these   men   were    essentially 
clean-souled. 

Yes,  they  were  out  to  hunt  big  game- 
man  against  beast — teeth  and  claws  against 
rifle — fair  and  square  we  met  him  and  the 
best  of  us  won.  Sometimes  they  died  of 
fever,  sometimes  they  were  killed  by  the 
animals  they  hunted — but  one  thing  may 
be  a  certainty,  and  that  is  that  each  and  all 
who  met  his  death  did  so  fearlessly  and 
with  no  repining.  They  had  taken  the 
chances,  and  if  the  chances  were  too  many 
for  them,  it  was  all  in  the  day's  work. 

How  pitifully  few  of  our  modern  young 
men  will  stand  comparison  with  these  old 
hunters — and  it  is  in  the  comparing  of  the 
old  with  the  new  which  brings  up  the 
question  in  one's  mind  as  to  whether  it  is 
not  actually  excessively  wrong  from  all 
points  of  view  to  hunt  in  the  manner  in- 
dulged in  by  the  man  of  the  present  day. 

The  question  as  to  our  right  in  the 
taking  of  animal  life  is  bound,  I  suppose,  to 
arise  in  the  minds  of  all  who  have  children 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

to  educate,  and  who  think  at  all — and  I 
personally  find  it  one  extremely  hard  to 
answer,  and  am  fain  to  make  a  compromise, 
which  I  know  is,  as  a  rule,  a  great  mistake : 
the  young  as  a  rule  do  not  question,  they 
hunt  and  take  life  in  a  purely  heartless 
fashion,  seeming  to  feel  no  doubt  as  to  the 
right  or  the  wrong  of  it,  and  while  this  is 
felt  I  should  say  hunt  if — and  this  is  a  very 
large  if — the  hunting  is  done  so  that  benefit 
for  mind  and  body  is  got  from  it ;  but  there 
is  little  doubt  that,  indulged  in  as  it  is  by  the 
rich  at  present,  it  becomes  a  merely  de- 
graded form  of  amusement.  In  the  future, 
perhaps,  we  shall  understand  more  clearly 
and  realise  more  definitely  as  to  whether  the 
taking  of  an  animal's  life  is  wrong  or  not. 
Let  me  try  and  explain  what  I  mean  when  I 
say  sport  ought  only  to  be  indulged  in  when 
of  benefit  to  body  and  soul. 

It  seems  to  me  the  only  permissible 
excuse  for  killing  ought  to  be,  firstly,  for 
food;  and  secondly — by  far  the  most  im- 
portant—  that   in   the    pursuit    and    killing 

84 


BJG    GAME    SHOOTING 

of  game,  a  man  becomes  a  finer,  cleaner 
type  owing  to  the  life  he  is  forced  to 
lead  during  that  pursuit.  It  is  a  life 
in  the  open  air.  He  has  to  work  hard. 
to  lead  a  primitive  life,  and  generally  has 
a  chance  to  brush  away  from  his  mind  and 
body  the  uncleanly  thoughts  and  clothes 
that  are  fostered  and  imposed  by  civili- 
sation. He  must  be  independent,  relying 
only  on  his  own  strength  and  skill :  he  must 
live  and  hunt  as  nearly  as  possible  as  his 
savage  forefathers  lived  and  hunted,  and. 
having  shaken  clear  of  civilisation,  he  has 
time  to  examine  his  mind  and  generally  get 
things  into  their  proper  perspective.  He  gives 
himself  a  chance  to  face  his  God  and  him- 
self if  he  does  this  fairly  land  a  few  months 
of  a  primitive,  clean  life  will  make  him  do  it 
in  spite  of  himself  :  he  will  come  back  from 
his  hunting  trip  a  better,  saner,  and  stronger 
man  mentally  and  physically  than  when  he 
started,  and  his  hunting  will  have  provided 
the  object  necessary  to  encourage  him  to 
lead  this  kind  of  a  life.     And  now  we  come 

85 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

back  to  the  question,  to  kill  or  not  to  kill. 
There  are  certain  people,  but  rarely  young 
people,  who  can  go  out  and  lead  a  hard, 
primitive  life,  for  the  sheer  love  of  the  thing 
and  for  the  good  of  their  souls,  and  not  need 
any  definite  object  to  lure  the  in  on  and  keep 
their  minds  busy.  But  the  average  man 
has  travelled  such  a  little  way  along  the  big 
road  of  thought,  that  he  requires  to  have 
something  to  amuse  the  superficial  part  of 
his  mind  while  he  is  straightening  and 
patching  his  tired  soul  and  body. 

Therefore,  if  killing  is  only  used  as  an 
excuse  for  leading  a  clean,  healthy  life,  and 
it  is  done  in  a  sportsmanlike  fashion,  it 
seems  to  my  humble  judgment  better  to 
hunt  and  be  clean,  than  not  hunt  and  be 
unclean.  A  compromise,  I  know,  but  the 
only  one  my  poor  judgment  allows  me.  If 
sport  is  not  undertaken  to  make  a  better 
man  of  you,  nowadays,  when  it  is  not  a 
necessity  to  hunt  to  live,  then  leave  it  alone, 
for  it  can  only  deteriorate  and  hinder.  Worth- 
less is  the  man  who  goes  out  hunting  with 

8G 


BIG   GAME    SHOOTING 

no  reason  for  his  going  beyond  nurturing  his 
personal  vanity,  with  the  desire  only  of 
bringing  home  so  many  heads  and  skins  and 
showing  them  off  to  admiring  relations  and 
friends.  Only  too  often,  he  cares  little  if 
the  trophies  were  gotten  in  a  sportsmanlike 
manner ;  he  goes,  accompanied  by  all  the 
trappings  and  comforts  of  civilisation, 
everything  arranged  and  made  easy,  often 
even  to  having  the  animals  he  hunts  found 
and  marked  down  for  him.  In  fact,  he  sets 
forth  to  accomplish  a  series  of  well-arranged 
animal  murders,  and  he  calls  it  sport. 

It  would  be  truly  instructive,  if  it  were 
possible,  to  turn  one  of  these  so-called  men 
loose  in  Africa  out  of  reach  of  civilisation, 
and  make  him  live  as  the  real  hunter  of  past 
days  lived,  dependent  entirely  on  his  own 
eyesight,  skill,  and  endurance.  I  very  much 
doubt  if  one  week  would  not  see  him  dying 
or  dead,  as  from  constant  self-indulgence 
from  earliest  youth,  and  soft  living  of  all 
kinds,  his  eyesight  is  rotten,  his  hearing  is 
of  no  use  whatever,  and  his  staying  power, 
unless  bolstered  up  by  incessant  stimulants, 

87 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

does  not  exist  at  all.  Unless  the  hunter  of  old 
had  had  all  his  senses  very  finely  developed, 
he  would  not  have  got  very  far,  and  Africa 
would  have  claimed  more  white  lives  than 
she  has  already  done. 

The  unfortunate  thing  is  that  this  type 
of  decadent  young  man  who  overruns  the 
healthy  hunting-grounds  of  Africa,  has  done, 
and  is  doing,  a  great  deal  of  harm  to  sport. 
He  has  more  money  than  brains  and  he 
has  no  self-respect  whatever.  Therefore  he 
indulges  in  a  form  of  sport  that  is  no  sport 
at  all,  hut  merely  the  seeking  of  a  worn-out, 
unhealthy  mind  after  amusement.  He  goes 
in  for  a  form  of  vice  in  sport,  which  is  a 
lust  to  kill  in  large  numbers — how,  does  not 
in  the  least  matter,  it  is  the  quantity  that 
matters  ;  quality  even  does  not  attract  him 
largely,  rather  three  small  heads  than  one 
good  one. 

Also,  to  be  cruel  is  perhaps  more  amusing 
than  not  to  be  cruel.  T  do  not  think  I  am 
wrong  in  saying  that  in  the  old  days  the 
man  who  did  not  kill  as  quickly  and  cleanly 
as  possible  would  have    been   called  a  bad 

88 


BIG   GAME    SHOOTING 

sportsman.  Boys  were  brought  up  to  con- 
sider sport  a  very  serious  thing,  and  to  be 
named  a  good  sportsman  more  or  less  hall- 
marked you.  They  regarded  sport  very 
seriously,  these  great-grandfathers  of  ours, 
and  often  in  a  manner  which  would  appear  to 
us  with  wider  interests  somewhat  ridiculous. 
But  the  trouble  is  that  sport  is  still  freely 
indulged  in — big  game  hunting  more  than 
it  used  to  be,  since  great  distances  can  now 
be  covered  with  ease  and  comfort — and  the 
good  old  rules  as  to  what  made  a  good 
sportsman  and  what  didn't,  have,  instead  of 
becoming  more  stringent,  almost  ceased  to 
exist.  The  high  ideals  which  the  old  sports- 
men kept  constantly  in  front  of  them  have 
gone,  and  in  their  place  reigns  a  most  un- 
wholesome desire  to  slaughter  at  all  costs, 
which  has  naturally  led  to  many  cruel 
forms  of  hunting  that  would  not  have  been 
tolerated  in  the  old  days.  Fair  play  for  man 
and  beast  was  the  gospel  of  the  old  hunters. 
Amusement  for  the  hunter  is  the  cry  nowa- 
days, and  a  poor  lot  of  human  beings  indulg- 
ing in  a  very  poor  form  of  sport  is  the  result. 

89 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

A  ceaseless  endeavour  to  kill  dangerous 
animals,  and  to  remain  perfectly  safe  while 
doing  so,  is,  from  a  sportsman's  point  of  view, 
a  somewhat  nauseating  sight.  A  favourite 
device  of  this  sort  is  tying  up  a  live  animal, 
such  as  a  donkey  or  a  goat,  climbing  up  a 
tree  to  a  safe  perch,  and  from  there  shooting 
lions,  &c,  which  will  come  to  devour  the  tie- 
up.  The  feelings  of  the  said  tie-up  during 
the  hours  of  waiting  do  not  require  much 
imagination  to  realise. 

Hunting  a  lion  with  a  pack  of  hounds, 
four  or  five  men  on  ponies  with  rifles,  is 
another  very  favourite  pastime  nowadays. 
It  has  its  advantages  in  being  fairly  safe — 
for  the  men  ;  the  hounds,  of  course,  may 
suffer.  The  King  of  Beasts — would  any  one 
recognise  him  by  that  name,  as,  hunted, 
winded,  dazed  by  the  clamour  of  many 
hounds, he  tries  to  make  the  long  grass? — and, 
when  he  does  make  a  break  for  the  open,  it 
does  not  matter  if  one  rifle  misses,  or  only 
wounds  him,  there  are  always  two  or  three 
more  to  finish  him  off  before  he  can  re- 
taliate. 

90 


BIG   GAME    SHOOTING 

If  we  will  not  face  him  on  our  feet,  man 
and  rifle  against  beast  and  claws,  would  it 
not  be  more  sportsmanlike  to  leave  him 
alone  ?  A  pack  of  hounds  and  four  or  six 
rifles  against  one  lion.  Well  it  is  that  you 
mighty  lion-hunters,  who,  unaided  and  badly 
armed,  sought  out  and  killed  your  lions  by 
sheer  skill  and  bravery,  taking  all  chances, 
and  only  proud  if  the  chances  were  against 
you — well  it  is  that  you  have  passed  on; 
or  do  your  spirits  still  haunt  that  land  of 
fascination  and  disease,  and,  perchance, 
mourn  over  each  great  beast  that  is  done 
to  death  by  the  hands  of  degenerate 
creatures,  who  manage  to  preserve  their 
worthless  lives  against  your  mighty  strength, 
merely  by  being  able  to  entirely  obliterate 
from  their  minds  what  the  words  '  good 
sportsmen  '  once  meant  ? 

It  would  be  of  some  interest  to  know 
how  many  lions,  of  the  many  that  are  killed 
nowadays,  are  met  face  to  face,  one  man 
on  the  ground  against  one  lion.  Not  so 
very  many,  methinks.  One  hears  so  much 
about  the  number  of  lions  killed  by  So-and- 

91 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

so,  but  the  methods  of  killing  are  generally 
left  to  the  imagination  of  the  listener.  I 
believe  there  have  been  people  degraded 
enough  even  to  trap  lions  and  think  no 
shame  of  it.  Hardly  would  this  be  per- 
missible even  if  there  was  a  famous  man- 
eater  to  be  killed,  unless  every  other  sport- 
ing method  had  been  tried  and  failed.  Why 
this  type  of  creature,  who  does  this  sort  of 
thing  and  boasts  of  it,  is  not  taken  and  given 
a  horse- whipping,  and  then  expelled  from 
decent  society,  I  know  not — except  that  I 
suppose  the  old  sense  of  fairness  and  good 
sportsmanship  is  breathing  its  last.  I  felt 
this  very  strongly  when  in  London  a  short 
time  ago,  I  went  to  see  some  moving 
pictures  of  big  game  taken  in  Africa.  One 
of  the  pictures  remains  unpleasantly  clear 
in  my  memory  :  it  was  that  of  a  hyena  in  a 
trap,  caught  by  one  leg ;  it  grovelled  along 
on  its  belly,  tongue  out,  covered  with  dust, 
in  an  agony  of  fear,  and  showing  the  hideous 
misery  of  despair  to  be  seen  only  in  the 
eyes  of  trapped  animals ;  he  ceased  his  con- 
vulsive efforts  to  get  free   for  the  moment, 

92 


BIG  GAME   SHOOTING 

and  he  was  then  stirred  up  with  sticks,  so 
that  his  struggles  might  prove  an  amusing 
picture  to  be  shown  all  over  the  world.  It 
was  explained  during  this  picture  that  the 
trap  was  padded  and  could  cause  the  animal 
no  pain,  as  if  pain  of  a  wounded  limb  be 
felt  or  matter  much  to  a  trapped  animal. 
It  is  the  terrible  fear,  the  feeling  of  helpless- 
ness and  being  at  the  mercy  of  all  comers, 
— they  who  have  always  been  free— look  at 
their  eyes ;  and  even  if  they  be  sorely 
wounded,  it  is  not  pain  you  see  there,  but 
sheer,  horrible  terror,  the  terror  of  the 
trapped  animal,  a  thing  to  stamp  out  quickly 
by  a  merciful  death,  or,  better  still,  give  it 
back  its  freedom.  It  was  also  explained 
that  anyway  it  did  not  matter  much  as  the 
hyena  was  a  horrible  animal !  Fifty  years 
ago,  if  moving  pictures  had  existed  and  such 
a  picture  had  been  shown  to  a  house  full  of 
men,  women,  and  children,  I  feel  certain 
that  it  would  have  been  greeted  with  hisses 
instead  of  the  applause  it  received,  and  the 
man  who  had  the  indecency  to  show  such  a 
picture  would  most  likely  have  visited  the 

93 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

nearest  horse-pond.  Trapping  has  been 
clone  for  years,  as  a  rule  to  kill  vermin,  but 
it  is  generally  left  to  paid  men  and  regarded 
as  a  disagreeable  necessity.  We  have  come 
to  sorry  times  indeed  when  we  can  regard 
the  struggles  of  a  trapped  animal  as  an 
amusing  spectacle,  and  take  no  shame  in 
letting  our  children  see  such  methods  of 
sport.  It  is  not  only  in  hunting  dangerous 
game  that  cruelty  is  indulged  in,  for  it  exists 
still  more  freely  in  the  chase  of  the  non- 
dangerous  kind.  Little  shame  is  felt  in 
wounding,  and  allowing  a  wounded  animal 
to  get  away  to  die  slowly  in  great  pain 
from  his  wound,  or  perhaps  to  be  eaten  by 
one  of  the  greater  hunting  animals. 

Unless  a  man  is  a  perfect  shot,  he  is 
bound  to  wound  sometimes.  But  he  ought 
to  do  his  level  best  to  find  the  animal  and 
put  it  out  of  its  pain.  Nowadays  there 
seems  a  sort  of  slackness  about  bothering 
to  go  after  a  wounded  animal,  which  must 
come  from  a  total  want  of  imagination,  and 
also  from  the  lack  of  having  it  instilled 
severely  into  boys'  minds  like  it  used  to  be, 

94 


BIG  GAME   SHOOTING 

that  to  wound  and  not  to  kill  was  something 
to  be  very  much  ashamed  of,  and  that,  if  it 
had  been  done,  it  betokened  a  failure  and 
a  falling-off  from  the  moral  standpoint  of  a 
sportsman.  When  this  feeling  was  strongly 
developed,  men  were  more  careful  how  they 
shot ;  they  would  not  shoot  at  animals  at  a 
distance  that  five  times  out  of  six  they  were 
bound  to  miss  or  wound ;  they  hunted  more 
carefully,  and  took  more  pains  about  getting 
within  reasonable  distance  before  firing. 
The  mass  of  stuff  that  goes  away  wounded 
in  Africa  from  indiscriminate  firing  at  long 
distances  would  make  a  vast  total  if  it  could 
be  counted  up.  I  imagine  boys  also  used  to 
be  taught  a  more  thorough  knowledge  of 
sport.  The  hunting  of  the  animals  was 
considered  of  as  great  an  importance  as 
the  letting  off  of  the  rifle.  A  man  was  not 
content  to  have  the  beast  found  for  him, 
and  he  himself  led  up  to  it,  the  rifle  placed 
in  his  hands,  and  sometimes  told  even  when 
to  let  it  off!  A  good  many  of  the  young 
men  of  the  present  day  would  be  greatly  at 
a  loss,  I  fear,  if  they  had  even  to  clean  their 

95 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

rifles    themselves,    and   to    take   a  rifle   to 
pieces  would  be  a  Chinese  puzzle  to  them. 

The  old  hunters  were  a  mine  of  informa- 
tion on  the  countries  they  travelled  in,  and 
on  the  habits  of  the  animals  they  hunted. 
The  present-day  man  seems  almost  as  if  he 
were  deaf  and  blind,  so  little  does  he  know 
either  about  the  animals  he  hunts  or  the 
countries  he  travels  in. 

Surely  sport  regarded  merely  as  a  means 
to  get  so  many  heads  and  skins,  not  caring 
if  the  lowest  and  most  unsportsmanlike 
methods  are  used  so  long  as  so  much  stuff 
is  collected,  must  have  only  the  most  de- 
grading effect  on  the  man  who  indulges 
in  it. 

Gone  are  the  days  when  to  live  we  had 
to  hunt  and  kill.  So  if  we  now  hunt  at 
all,  let  it  be  as  an  excuse  to  be  in  the  great 
open  places  of  the  world,  bettering  ourselves 
in  mind  and  body.  And  let  us  at  least  try 
only  to  employ  sportsmanlike  methods, 
and  to  follow  staunchly  along  the  road 
that  those  mighty  hunters  of  old  marked 
so  bravely  for  us. 

96 


RELIGION 

IT    ifl   La.  ossible  to  pick  up  a  news- 

paper   nowadays    without    seeing   the 
n  heading  many  columns  of 
printed    matter   containing  the  views   and 
dries  on  this  subject  from  all  kinds  and 
eon   itioiifl  of  people  and  from  all  parts  of 
the   kingdoL         1  >st  of  the  newspaper  dis- 
g    f  rally  about  the  more  or 
Less  failings    on    the    part    of  our 

modern  education,  and  rarelj"  seem  to  make 
Ic  finifl  rt   to   discus  s    :  _  e    aerioog 

evils  is;       .       :     r   :i_eir   riis:r_.r 

to   the    curioufi  lack  of  reason  and  uncr 
standing    in   tic   icuing    .:    .-.-.:      ;.n_i      [; 
seems    HffieaU        understand  how  any  one 
has       r     «  the  matter  a  momei_.  a 

serf  oufl  the  ighl  can  fail  to  realise  the  hope- 
lessness present   methodte    :•£  eduea- 

H 


DANCING,   BEAUTY,  AND    GAMES 

tion,  which  the  average  child  of  both  rich 
and  poor  has  to  suffer  from — both  during 
the  period  of  that  education  and  in  their 
lives  afterwards  where  the  effects  of  it 
follow  them  to  the  grave. 

The  evils  of  modern  education  are  many, 
and  not  to  be  eradicated  in  a  day ;  but  the 
great  root  of  most  of  these  evils,  and  that 
from  which  they  all  spring,  is  that  our 
children  are  given  no  God  to  worship,  or, 
rather,  they  are  given  a  name,  to  which  they 
gabble  a  prayer  morning  and  night,  titter 
at  if  they  hear  mentioned,  and  thoroughly 
abominate  on  Sundays  on  account  of  the 
boredom  and  discomfort  inflicted  on  that 
day  in  His  Name. 

Surely  it  would  be  well  worth  the  experi- 
ment to  replace  what  is  merely  a  disliked  or 
ignored  name  with  a  real  and  living  God  in 
the  children's  minds,  and  I  think  the  result 
would  be  that  education  would  be  helped 
farther  towards  a  perfect  and  sound  basis 
than  it  has  ever  been  before. 

Teach   them   to   have   something  strong 

98 


RELIGION 

and  wonderful  to  believe  in,  a  reason  for 
doing  the  right  and  avoiding  the  wrong,  a 
great  and  splendid  helping  presence,  a  living 
thought,  instead  of  a  hopelessly  unjust  and 
tiresome  nonentity,  which  at  present  is  what 
He  represents  to  the  average  child. 

Many  people  are  trying  and  trying  faith- 
fully to  find  out  the  cause  of  the  failure  in 
our  modern  education ;  and  why,  when  so 
much  money  is  spent,  results  are  so  dis- 
appointing. Yet  it  seems  to  occur  to  few 
that  it  is  building  on  sand  to  try  and  im- 
press upon  the  brain  of  a  developing  human 
being  the  right  way  of  living  and  learning, 
and  at  the  same  time  giving  that  human 
being  no  true  reason  as  to  why  that  way 
is  more  right  than  any  other  way.  The 
extremely  young  will  believe,  perhaps,  that 
because  mother  or  teacher  says  such-and- 
such  a  thing,  that  it  is  right,  but  the  brain  a 
little  more  developed  rejects  an  edict  given 
with  no  reason  behind  it,  and  I  feel  most 
sincerely  certain  that  until  God  is  made  into 
a  real   living   and  helping   thought   in   the 

99 


DANCING,  BEAUTY,  AND  GAMES 

mind  of  the  young,  education  will  remain 
much  where  it  is.  From  our  schools  and 
homes  a  stream  of  men  and  women  will 
continue  to  issue  forth  with  indifferent 
educations,  lacking  in  culture,  and  with 
the  lowest  of  ideals,  avIio  are  helpless  prey 
to  the  first  and  strongest  influences  that 
may  seize  on  them.  If  the  influences  are  for 
the  good,  all  may  be  well ;  but  if  they  be  for 
the  bad,  what  help  or  strength  has  ever 
been  given  in  our  education,  mentally  or 
physically,  to  assist  in  combating  them  ? 

Religion  as  it  is  taught  to  the  average 
child  is  not  only  worse  than  useless,  it  is  a 
blasphemy! — a  strong  word,  I  know,  but  a 
true  one  ;  take  any  average  child,  rich  or 
poor,  and  mention  the  Almighty  to  him  or 
her,  and  see  the  result :  either  a  blank  and 
uncomprehending  stare  will  be  the  result, 
or  an  inane  giggle,  followed  by  a  bored  and 
long-suffering  expression.  Is  not  that  blas- 
phemy? Not  from  the  child,  whose  fault 
it  is  not,  but  from  the  people  who  are 
responsible  for  that  child  and  its  upbringing. 

100 


RELIGION 

I  have  travelled  in  many  lands,  but  only 
in  English-speaking  countries  have  I  found 
the  name  of  God  treated  with  so  little 
respect  and  understanding  amongst  the 
young.  And  yet  we  call  ourselves  Christians, 
the  meaning  of  which  word  is  followers  after 
Christ.  Children  are  the  most  reasonable  of 
creatures,  and  give  them  really  strong  and 
beautiful  reasons  for  everything  they  are 
asked  to  do,  and  they  will  cling  to  those 
reasons  with  the  greatest  of  strength  and 
faith.  Surely  if  we  could  conquer  our  curi- 
ous aversion  to  bringing  God's  name  into 
our  daily  lives,  except  when  we  wish  to  take 
it  in  vain,  it  would  make  a  wonderful  differ- 
ence in  the  rearing  of  our  children — to  try 
and  make  Him  into  a  real  and  living 
presence,  to  help  and  strengthen  in  work 
and  play,  not  merely  a  Name  to  be  bored, 
frowned,  and  laughed  at ;  and  I  feel  certain 
education  would  show  the  most  surprising 
results.  It  is  indeed  difficult  to  understand 
that  any  one  can  seriously  believe  that  the 
manner    in    which    religion    is    taught     to 

101 


DANCING,   BEAUTY,   AND    GAMES 

children  in  our  schools  and  homes  can  ever 
have  any  influence  or  be  of  any  help  to 
them  in  their  future  lives,  still  less  in  their 
work  at  school. 

I  imagine  the  question  that  might  be 
asked  is :  What  have  the  Almighty  and  school- 
work  to  do  with  each  other  ?  Personally,  I 
think  the  answer  is,  '  Everything.'  Unless 
the  feeling  of  God's  presence  and  help  is 
made  a  real  thing  to  children  in  the  little 
worries,  difficulties,  and  joys  of  childhood, 
unless  they  learn  to  turn  to  Him  in  those 
small  trials,  they  are  not,  I  think,  likely  when 
the  large  troubles  of  manhood  and  woman- 
hood come  along  to  look  for  help  and 
comfort  in  the  only  direction  from  which  it 
can  come. 

The  feeling  of  His  nearness  ought  never 
to  be  absent,  whether  it  is  a  sum  to  be 
struggled  with  or  a  page  of  history  to  be 
conquered  ;  the  sum  is  struggled  with  and 
the  page  of  history  conquered,  not  because 
of  the  punishment  that  might  occur  other- 
wise, but  because  a  brain  has  been  given  to 

102 


RELIGION 

us  to  be  taken  care  of  and  developed  to  the 
best  of  our  ability,  and  that  to  neglect  to 
develop  it  is  to  show  that  a  trust  God  has 
given  us  has  been  misplaced. 

Later  in  life,  when  it  is  not  a  sum  or 
a  page  of  history  that  is  our  difficulty  or 
temptation,  the  habit  of  feeling  the  nearness 
of  God's  presence  and  the  responsibility  to 
Him  will  surely  prove  a  very  great  and 
real  help. 

Let  us  at  least  try  to  give  our  children 
something  more  than  a  name  to  hold  by  in 
their  hours  of  darkness  and  trouble,  and  if 
people  who  '  having  eyes  see  not  and  having 
ears  hear  not,'  cry  Idealism  and  Utopianism, 
let  us  take  no  heed,  for  all  things  are 
possible,  even  Utopia. 


London ;  Strnvgrvayit,  Printei-s, 


3*/ 


DATE  DUE 

CAVLORD 

PRINTED  IN  U.  5. A. 

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